Shane Idleman emphasizes the importance of taking care of our bodies as a gift from God, discussing the rising health issues such as obesity and diabetes, and the need for a balanced approach to nutrition and physical activity. He advocates for a lifestyle that includes healthy eating, fasting, and exercise, while also recognizing the spiritual connection between physical health and spiritual well-being. Shane encourages the congregation to seek God's guidance in their health choices and to be mindful of the impact of their diet on their overall quality of life.

All right guys, you ready to get started? We're going to watch a quick, just two minute video they're going to put up. We'll hit the lights a little bit. It kind of sets the stage where I want to take a little bit of this and really thinking about our body and how we take care of this wonderful gift that God has given us. So, let's play that and then I'll come back up and get started. Will you grow old with vitality? Or get old with disease? It's time to decide. If you go to my website and you put in treat the cause, not the symptom, change your life before it changes you. And you guys might have already had the handout. I think we handed that out. That's going to be a lot of the notes, although not even close to the majority of the notes. And the biggest challenge for me on this topic was what do I say and what don't I say? Because that's why I write books on this topic and you can get all this information in my books for free. You download it for free from the church website. It has all this information, six, seven, eight hours of information. So I try to just encapsulate it into what is the most important. And I think we all agree that things are getting difficult financially, relationally, all these challenges and how we feel really plays a role into that. So that's my thank yous, my introductions. I also want to put up a disclaimer. I'm not giving medical advice. I'm not trying to take the place of a physician. I want you to do your due diligence, talk to your doctor, you keep them involved because there's a lot of things coming to play from medication, they know you best. So I'm not coming from a medical perspective. I'm coming from a biblical perspective, but also with a background in health and fitness. But I think we can all agree that we are at a crossroads. I wrote this many times before. Obesity is an epidemic plaguing the young as well as the old, reaching alarming levels in children. Are you aware of that? Child onset diabetes, child obesity. And that actually shouldn't be something that our nation has to deal with. And I know it's challenging. Five kids at home, wanting those bunny crackers, wanting the juice boxes, the struggle is real. I understand that, but we have to make some changes. Diabetes, did you know this is affecting millions and millions of people? And cancer and heart disease are the number one killers in America. And the bottom line is we cannot sustain this. We talk about the healthcare system often. And the healthcare system, the rate it's going, do your own research, they don't know how it's gonna sustain itself in 20 years from now or so. And they even factor in that our children won't outlive us, meaning the death rate. Of course, we'll die before them, but they're gonna have premature deaths because of where everything is going. And so, okay, what does this have to do with the church? What does it have to do with Christians? First and foremost, I don't have all the answers, amen? So I'm not up here telling you this is exactly what you need to do. And if you've been following nutrition for any length of time, is there conflicting reports out there or what? Keto, keto, keto, no, no, no. Carnivore, carnivore, carnivore, no, no. Paleo, paleo, paleo, no. Whole plants-based food. It's like, what is going on? So I've done massive amounts of research. I've looked at studies from Harvard Research and Dr. Walter Longo, I don't know if you've heard of him. He's head of longevity at USC. I study a lot of his research, a lot of his work. I've talked to Alan Goldhammer with True North Center, fasting center. We go back and forth on email sometimes. Dr. Daniel Pompa, Peter Atiyah, one of the top foremost experts in intermittent fasting and fasting. And so all this information that we have. Now, the question that comes up, and I've actually had to deal with it a lot lately, and it's a little, Shane, it's all about spiritual health. Just focus on preaching. Don't even touch this other topic. Well, I just know I feel like garbage. I can't preach well, I can't pastor well, I don't wanna talk to people, I don't wanna go visit them in the hospital, I'm not nice to them, I'm more irritable. It affects everything, how we take care of this. So I think they're just drinking the Kool-Aid, or convicted, and they don't want it to make changes. It's vitally important. God wants us to steward this gift he has given us to be more productive. And I'm just telling you as a living witness, a better father, a better pastor, how am I gonna be up here three hours today, preach again tomorrow, did a funeral yesterday, if I was 60, 70 pounds overweight, and eating donuts in my car? I would call in sick a lot. I couldn't do what I need to do. And I'm not preaching at you, I'm preaching to all of us, because I was someone who struggled with my weight all of my life. I was called lead britches, chubby, and fighting. And some of you know that. You know people, man, they never gain any weight, and they can just eat whatever. I'm a good friend of mine, he had pizza and all kinds of things. He was a bodybuilder. It didn't even matter. It's like, how is that possible? But some of us, I don't know, it's just the way the DNA is, that we want to eat more. And to me, it's a comfort. It makes me feel better. Chips and salsa and chocolate, and ah. All right, a little too transparent. So, my background, most of you know, but I got involved in health and fitness when I was probably, I remember working out at the old gyms in town, Bartoli's or Gold's Gym, World Gyms, 16, 17. Started to read more about nutrition. And then a guy introduced me to steroids. Dianabol, Anivar, Anadrol, Decadurabulin, Testosterone, Ethonate, Winstrow V, Ecopoids. Some of those are veterinarian drugs. And they introduced me to those, and I got bigger and stronger, and then started to learn to read my own blood work, and how the anabolic versus anaerobic. And I just was self-educated. And I knew how the steroids worked, that they really increase the volume of the cell. And that's why when you lose, you don't keep taking them, you, I don't know if you've ever heard of Dorian Yates, or these, Mr. Olympia, they look like me now. Because that cell, the cells shrink down. But if you take growth hormone, human growth hormone, you actually add more cells. And that became popular after Arnold Schwarzenegger and different things. So, I studied about nutrition. I love reading about how the cell works, the microchondria, and the ATP, the energy is built there, and autophagy, and apoptosis, and the cell division. It just fascinates me. And so, I think God gives us passions for areas where we can help others. And so, working with 24 Hour Fitness, I supervised, I don't even know how many, probably 30 trainers at each gym. So, maybe 120, 150 trainers. Looked at their accelerated results program. A lot of them knew more than me. But I studied what works, what doesn't, and why, and wrote a book about it. And talking to thousands of people. When you see 2,000 people a day, you can see who's getting in shape, and who's getting off their medication, and who's not. And I would see the same people sometimes. They would look the same years later. No different, and they're going to the gym every single day. Why? Because a lot of times, activity and exercise plays about 15% of it. Diet. What you put in is the other 85%. I saw that more times. And I saw people get off a high blood pressure medication, diabetic medication, especially obviously type two. Type two is where it's self-created. The problem is self-created. You've taken in so much glucose and so much sugar that your cells are like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I can't keep taking this insulin. So, you become insulin resistant. And so, what do they do? They pump you with more insulin. Well, insulin is a hormone that causes you to store body fat. Where glucagon is the opposite, that uses fat as fuel. And so, learning all this, this just amazes me. And what amazes me more than anything else, all those guys I just mentioned, except for probably Dr. Daniel Pompa, who has great material on intermittent fasting and fasting for those who want to go deeper, they all talk about evolution. You were so smart for a minute there. You know, it's just like, and they explain glycogen and glucose and proteins and how it breaks down in the body. And look at what it does. And a growth hormone is released. And IGF-1, insulin-like growth hormone. And mTOR is the big thing now. And autophagy. And all this just happened. And so, it drives me crazy. Because that's really where you have to start is God's design. And that's why there's division. You know, it's how we evolved, or our ancestors, 150,000 years ago. And this is what they ate. That's why we need to be eating this. And the arguments over the plant-based. And so, I want to bring a lot of clarity, because I think clarity helps. And clarity comes from God's word. And so, I built the whole program around God's word. What does it say? And you can discover there's a lot of truth there. And the reason people are divided, too. You know, you hear global warming, climate change. I guess a lot of it's due to too many cows. You know, and so they think that meat, you can't eat meat, that's causing global warming and different things. And there's a lot of people who don't eat meat because of just, I mean, the way animals are treated. I'll tell you what, researching this, it makes you sick. I mean, it is like, beyond what you would, it's so bad. Let me just say, it's pretty bad. How they treat animals and what they inject them with. And it's all production, it's all money-driven. So when you hear cage-free chickens, well, the cage is about this big. I mean, the area they let them run around. They open the cage, it's about this big. And then what do they feed the chickens? You know, GMO, genetically modified grain, soybean. And so it's just, we've got, because of profit, we've gotten away from what is healthy, what is good, what is right. And so that's why there's a lot of division because this worked for me, and this worked for me, and what we're finding on research. And so I wanna just pour in all of this to you. We will have the slides you can take pictures of. But the big thing for me is the physical is deeply affected by the spiritual. Not gonna go over that again, I just did. But how I'm doing spiritually often plays a role on how I'm doing physically. And how I'm doing physically often determines how I'm doing spiritually. They're interwoven. I'm not elevating the physical. I don't think it's that important. I think the spiritual is first and foremost. But let's say, for example, let's say, ah, I just caved into, and I know where some chocolate is in the office right now, okay? So let's just say I just caved into some chocolate. And this morning, wouldn't you know, what sounded really good, a nice, big donut with a cup of coffee. And now I get off track there, and now I come here, I'm feeling bloated, I don't feel that well. Maybe I can hurry through my notes. And then that lacks a discipline in other areas. I shouldn't really watch that, but now I am. And see, discipline, once you give it up in an area, it affects other areas of discipline. And the Bible is clear on making no provision for the flesh and disciplining your body and perseverance. And so it's the whole body, soul, and spirit. Mind is strengthened, but your heart is right. And if I'm strong in spiritual disciplines, I'm strong in physical disciplines. And they often just fit together the way that God designed us. And that's why I'm so passionate about this, because I do see a big difference in people that are taking care of their body, if they can, you know, to some degree. And it really helps in their spiritual disciplines too, because we keep saying, no, that's not right, that's not good for me, no. It'll filter into all areas of life. But now, going forward, of all the info, all the information there is to know about the human body, no one even knows a fraction of what's really going on. Because when you talk, oh, here's what diet you should do, did you know a lot of weight loss and getting in shape? Yes, it has to do with calories in, calories out, but also hormone levels. I mentioned insulin, insulin means store fat. Glucagon means burn fat. So how's your insulin and your glucagon? How's your testosterone level in men, or your IGF-1, insulin-like growth factor? And it's all these hormones doing all these amazing things. And even you get on a strict diet, and you get dieting, and I'm like, why, what's going on? And then now your metabolism has slowed down to meet that slower metabolic need. And now things are out of whack, and my thyroid, and so it's so complicated to really, I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all approach. You gotta, we talk with people and see what works best for them, especially if they're seeking God. I believe God will show you a lot of times. And we're not gonna have a perfect diet, I don't. It's on the side of heaven. We do the best we can, but I think we can die trying. We can steward this wonderful gift that God has given us. And I'm gonna get into a lot of things, and again, I'm sure some of you want, why aren't you talking about this? Why aren't you talking about that? And that was the hardest part. Unless I have six hours, I had to really condense it down. And so the first thing I wanna talk about is laying the foundation, laying the foundation. Here's the foundation you have to build this program on. God's design, God's design. How did God design you? How did God design me? And that's where all the phrases come from. Keto to carnivore. Keto to, and if you don't know what keto is, have you heard that term, most of you? Keto, ketogenic diet, eating the ketogenic diet, burning ketone bodies. What happens, it happened, and I'm gonna talk about it hopefully a little bit with my fasting experience. I might have to do a podcast. There's so much I wanna tell you about. 45 days ago I started on a fast, primarily water only. Just drank mainly water, a little bit of juice like this. Now and then if I had to get through a sermon, lost about 37 pounds, kept 30 of it off so far, and feel really good, but the first couple days I told Morgan, I'll see you in three days. I'll be in the room, or I'm taking drives because you're, what do they call it, hungry and angry, that combination. But also my body was saying, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, where's the glucose, where's the glucose? God designed, carbohydrates, the right kind and the right kind and the healthy type are good and God given. That's your body's chief source of energy is carbohydrates. And so once that is depleted because it's stored in the muscle and the liver, once it's gone, where's the fuel gonna come from? Fat, fat, fat, fat. So the body starts breaking down fat and it actually spares a lot of your muscle. It's called protein sparing mode. Your body was designed by a creator to protect those things that are important. And so now there's ketosis. You're going to ketosis and there's ketones floating around in the blood and that's the fuel now for the brain. And that's the fuel for your body. And most people can go weeks. I don't recommend it, you gotta do research, you gotta pretty much know what you're doing, but there's fasting clinics where people easily go 20, 30, 40, 50 days. The record is over a year. How is that possible? You can look it up, you can watch this story. Scotland University in Scotland, I think 56 years ago, because he's 450 pounds, but you see, he's not starving. What's he doing? He's burning the stored energy. And that's where he lived. And that's happened to me too. You start to burn about half a pound a day, 2,200 calories, a pound of fat's 3,500. And you start to burn a half a pound a day, half a pound a day, half a pound a day. Now in there, you might have a little muscle because muscle, and that's why I said the body is so incredibly well made that if I start to exert myself too much or I get involved in some exercise, I go bike riding, the body says, okay, ketone bodies are not a quick source of energy, I need to pull some from the muscle. And then something called gluconeogenesis happens where it'll break down my muscle into glucose to be the fuel. You see, this is just amazing. That's why somebody's trying to do this perfectly. You might as well stop Niagara Falls because the body is so intricately made. And that's why we look to God's design. And so keto, that's what keto is. And what happens if, let's say it takes you a week or two, you're not having a lot of carbohydrates. So every day, you lose a little bit more carbohydrates in your liver and in your muscle. You lose a little bit more, lose a little bit more. You finally get to a point now, you don't have a lot of stored carbohydrates. So your body will start burning the fat as fuel on a ketogenic diet because you're not feeding your body carbohydrates. Maybe it's not even over 50 grams. So that's not a lot. That's maybe two bananas, three bananas, depending on. So, but I can't live there. I don't know about you, but I can't live on avocados and nuts. And that's a plant-based keto. And then they have meat ketogenic diets where it's bacon and eggs for breakfast. I have maybe a tri-chip steak at dinner, big salad. It's all just fat, protein, and veggies. And it keeps your body in a ketogenic state. And that worked for some people. I mean, you know, that's why I can't tell you, oh, don't do that. Now, I would say it's hard to live there. It's not realistic. I think personally, you miss a lot of the important enzymes and the fiber from the beans and legumes and the antioxidant effects of berries. You know, but people have had tremendous results on it. And then carnivore is just absolutely crazy. Meat, that's it. Sounds good, but try it. It's not very good. Bacon in the morning with turkey bacon with eggs. Then a couple hours later at lunch, you want some tuna with the cooked salmon. Couple hours later, maybe some liver from a cow and some ground beef and a big steak. That's all you're having. Now, there's so many problems going on up here, in my mind, with just the practicality, the wisdom behind it. But there are people who have got results. I think his name's Jordan Peterson, well-famous from Canada. I don't know if you follow him much. He really stood against the Canadian government, different thing. He said it's worked great to remove some of the things in his life and maybe even in his daughter's life as well. I can't remember exactly what they dealt with, but here's why. If the type of eating that you're embracing, that carbohydrate diet, this high-flour, this high-refined, if that's causing the reaction, then removing that is going to help. But I don't know if the carnivore is the right approach. If you're just eating meat all day, just, I can't fathom that. And there's a lot of talk about our ancestors and how we evolve, but again, we take it from a biblical perspective. And in the Bible, really, the struggles were gluttony and addiction. Same things, gluttony, eating too much, mainly meat, and then addiction, alcohol. And so we have the same thing going on now, eating too much and addiction. It's just much broader. Now you can get the junk everywhere. And so we have to look at God's design. Also, I put up here God's strength on the next screen, God's strength, the key to success. As a believer, as a Christian, you've got to press in. You've got to rely on God's strength. Lord, what do you want me to do? What direction do you want me to take? What is best for my life? And that begins to strengthen you. Because if not, then we put nutrition and physical before the spiritual. The spiritual has to come first. The spiritual health is first. That's the foundation, then you build on top of that. Genetics, genetics, no, you're not destined for failure. You're not destined for failure. Something I liked studying about three years ago is it's called epigenetics. It's called the study of genes and how they transfer information. It would blow your mind. Let's say you're predispositioned in your family to cancer. Okay, the genome and things, that might be the predisposition, but you can change all that because your body's sending different signals to the DNA and the gene, everything. It's just altering, maybe intermittent fasting and lifestyle changes. Now it changes your gene expression. And so you don't have to be what your genetics are. You can actually change a lot of that. And again, I believe a lot of that's biblical. Motivation is key. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Motivation, motivation. If you're worried at the price of getting started, you should see the cost of staying exactly where you're at. And so what I do is I motivate myself frequently and reminding myself as the kids get older and as we've got to do things as we get older and be more productive and not wanting to tax the healthcare system or our spouse. And we know, we can tell that there's a difference in how we feel, and so that should motivate us. God may not add another year to our life because you need it, but because others do. And then also, what is a key foundational point before I get started on the actual practical application is what is sustainable? What is sustainable? What is sustainable? What can you keep doing? That's why diets don't work. And I think that was my first book, Why Diets Don't Work, actually. What Works When Diets Don't, I think, actually, was one of those. But the reason they don't, and I would tell you, oh, man, here's what I'm doing for 30 days. Okay, well, you got 30 more years. What, 30 days? And back then it was popular, the Atkinson diet. Not much has changed. That's really the ketogenic carnivore diet. And 30 days, 30 pounds, I'm gonna do this for, I'm gonna, I got this goal. Now, it's okay to set small goals and you hit those, but this has to be a lifestyle you can sustain. And one reason, let's say, for example, whole plant food-based, you know, I've got my, if you've got a refrigerator, everything's cut and ready. How am I gonna do that with five kids? I've got cheesy crackers and tortilla chips from Costco, they're organic, right? And you've got, just like, this is not gonna work. And so you have to work what works for you. What can you sustain? What lifestyle changes can you manage? And I've noticed it's not about 100% perfection, but it's a good 80% of doing what is right. Falling forward, stepping in the right direction, making the day-to-day, the more, one thing I love about fasting, I told my wife I would love, I wish I was still fasting sometimes because you've made up your mind, your body's turned over and there's no hunger anymore. There's no pull. Now it's harder to say no, now, than when I was fasting. And so you live in that spot though, the more you say no and turn that down and you begin to discipline your body, that's when it becomes even more sustainable. And there's no shortcuts. I had to repeat that, no shortcuts. Biblical principles must be followed. There's no shortcuts, 30 pounds in 30 days, unless you're fasting and water fasting, but that's, I wouldn't recommend it for most people. But there's no belt that you can wear, there's no pill you can take. There's these info commercials, especially around January 1st. You just gotta, what are biblical principles? What is gonna, and it's gonna take a while. I mean, it took a while to put it on. It takes a while. It's that perseverance. And what I mentioned, a half pound a day, even fasting, that can become discouraging. You're like, a half a pound? I haven't eaten a half, it's like, but you're moving forward to the end result. Perseverance, regardless of what you see, stepping out knowing that it's for the best that you're doing this. And then finally, I have to say this, most physicians are not educated in the area of prevention. I think they have four hours of training in nutrition in their whole course of the medical school. And I know my personal physician, my dad's cardiologist, I could mention names around town, you probably recognize them. They have no clue. I mean, they're overweight, they drink tons of coffee, they don't eat well. And then here's the pill to get rid of that. Here's the pill to fix that. And that's not preventing the problem, or that's not getting to the root of the problem, that's just masking it. For example, before I forget, and I hope I get to it, the big thing right now is statin drugs. You know, high cholesterol, high cholesterol, you need to take a statin drug. Well, number one, there's no such thing in my mind as bad and good cholesterol. They're both good. Without cholesterol, you would die. You couldn't make it very long at all because cholesterol encapsulates all the cells, it's a coating around the cells, it's responsible for hormone regulation. Cholesterol is very bad. You have the HDL, high-density lipoproteins, and that's when the cholesterol grabs onto a protein and can be delivered. And the bad cholesterol, the reason they call it bad, is actually what it's doing, it's taking the cholesterol from your liver and bringing it to a spot in your body that needs to be repaired. And then the good cholesterol is taking that away and bringing it back to the liver. Now, I don't think you want elevated levels and you wanna be careful, but see, the role of those, what's happening, many think too, is this bad cholesterol is taking the cholesterol to the arteries. Why is it taking it there? To repair the damage. What caused the damage? Could it be our bad lifestyle choices? Chemicals in the food, refined oils, sugars? So why are we getting rid of this necessity when it's not the problem? I mean, if you have a research like some tribes in Africa, all they do is hunt and eat meat. They live, their teeth look well, they're 140 pounds, very slender, live life, no heart disease. Wait, but they're eating tons of cholesterol. And for a pill to tell your liver to stop making cholesterol, golly, are we sure we're really fixing the problem? Why would you do that to somebody and say, hey, drop 50 pounds, what's causing it? Let's change your diet, let's remove some of these triggers and then you help, you get to the root of what's causing it. And so, also I talked to, I just heard an interview too. One physician said he helps type two diabetes. I've been in practice for 25 years and I never saw a patient with type two diabetes recover. The reason is he only prescribed. And you can Google, you can look up YouTube, Dr. Jason Fung. That's all he does is he specializes in type two diabetes. And he sees people off their medication all the time, daily. Why? Because type two diabetes is diet related. Like my lifestyle causes it. And that's one of the reasons I fast is because I have the top seven or eight indications of early onset diabetes, blurred vision, my feet going asleep, not sleeping well, frequent urination, all the, I'm like, oh my goodness, that's me, that could be me pretty soon. And see what did I have to change. I can't go get a pill, but isn't that the American way? That sounds so easy. Then I can just eat what I want and do what I want. So be careful of these pills. Be careful that the, because now sometimes people need things. I'm not against a high blood pressure medication. For example, sometimes Coumadin, for example, will thin the blood. So it's easier for your heart to beat. But with thin blood, it's hard to repair any cuts. I remember one day, I'll never forget, I think we were walking into my cousin's wedding. My dad just shaved and his whole neck was blood into his shirt. I just thought he cut his neck off. What happened? All these little nicks on Coumadin. His whole neck was full of blood into his shirt. I remember, my mom, Jim, what? He had to change, take a shower. But see, that's thin blood. Is that the answer? How do you repair cuts? Internally even, if something, you know, the blood should coagulate and repair itself. And so I think we just need, how does the body work? That's what we need to be looking at. And there's a local physician, always trying to sell people stuff. Over on West Lancaster, kind of by the freeway, I won't get too technical. Off Avenue N. But anyway, these guys drive me crazy. I go in there and I was actually suffering from, my heart was irregular and panic attacks. This is 2015. And I kind of self-diagnosed. I'm like, oh, I just gave up cold turkey caffeine. I know what's going on now. So I kind of figured that one out. But anyway, he goes, oh, Manchin, your blood pressure's high. And he starts pulling out things from the cabinet. Take this pill in the morning, this one in the evening. I go, okay, hold on. My blood pressure's normally pretty good. Did that person happen to use the Big Cuff? I'm like, I don't know, let's try it. Oh, he checked. Oh, you're fine, you're fine, you're good. They almost sent me home with blood pressure medication for the rest of my life. Another physician off of Avenue J, won't get too technical, said in my wife, she'll remember, we were scared. My daughter was having a hard time breathing. At night we could hear like, not breathing well. Like, oh, this isn't good. So he goes, on a scale of one to 10, this is above a 10. We need to get her down to the hospital, into surgery, remove her adenoids and her tonsils. I'm like, wait a minute, both of those are good for immunity and we're just gonna go rush down there and hold on, hold on, hold on. Just praying and, Lord, what do we need to do? Talked to, researched on it, got her off of all sugar and I would take her on drives every day and she would fall asleep for an hour. Five, six days later, it's all gone. What do you do with that? How many times have they recommended amoxicillin for strep throat? And I say, hold on, let's give it tonight, spray a lot of clodial silver. And clodial silver could change diet, maybe fasting a little, just kids don't need to eat every two and a half hours. Let's not give you sugar, just health. And wake up in the morning, the throat looks fine. Now, is there a time and a place for that? Of course. But what are antibiotics? Antibiotic against life. And so when you take those, are you aware that you're killing everything? All the bacteria, your gut bacteria, your microbiome? You're killing all of that. And I think if it's in Europe, they only recommend antibiotics for five or six days. In America, we're up to 10 days. Don't even get me into vaccines and all this stuff, just don't go there. But anyway, so we need physicians. I text, I actually have my physician's cell phone. We text and he helps me now and then over the years and I ask him questions. But again, they run to the solution. I remember one time my testosterone level was like 250. Like, this is not good. He goes, oh, I know what'll fix that, androgel. Androgen or something like that. So like, I'm four or five days in and you just put this stuff. I'm like, why am I so angry? Holy cow. Sure, remember, I'm like wanting to throw coat hangers. I'm like, this is not, what's going on? I text him, he's like, oh, well, that does happen in some cases. Because testosterone, right? Now like, what is going on? And the problem with replacement therapy with hormones like testosterone is your body will actually stop producing natural testosterone because the synthetic is being introduced. And so changing diet, different things, exercising more, got that testosterone back 5,600, 700. Without that. And so see, we have to start thinking, how does the body work? It doesn't mean we don't ever use these things because I think there is a time for antibiotics. I have the amoxicillin in the refrigerator ready to go. Next morning, if I saw she's getting worse, this isn't working. I need to, we need, but it's using wisdom. It's seeking God before the physician. And a lot, they don't know, just tell your physician, hey, I'm thinking of fasting. A doctor could lose their license in the 1980s for recommending that. Malpractice. Now it's the new thing. For those who want to embrace it, Walter Lungo, again, USC, he's head of longevity. He recommends a calorie restriction and intermittent fasting and all those things. And we're finding that God's word is true. God's word's talked about fasting for decades, I mean decades, for millennial in the Bible. And, but you say, but it doesn't, not really for health reasons, not only for spiritual reasons, but fasting was a part of their life. They couldn't just go drive to NPM. You know, you made something and you ate it. And you wait for the next time. If any of you saw that, what's that show that was on? I just watched clips researching this, Living Below Zero or something. Below Zero? For, yeah, whatever that is. That guy's in Alaska. He's up there on this little cabin. What's he eating all winter? Meat and fat. And he'll like break bone marrow of a moose and he'll just start eating the fat out of the bone marrow. Very slender, very good shape. So what's going on here? That's bad, that's not bad. If you start to research more, you'll see how much money the sugar industry spent in the 1980s and 90s for ads against fat. And then the meat, dairy, they do their own thing too. And so I'm gonna try to unpack that. Hold on, I'm getting there. I'm getting there. This is important. So what do we need to do? Here are the five things. If you focus on these five things, this is what helped me tremendously. And I believe it will help you as well. I call it five pillars of health. And the number one is so obvious. We talk about a lot, but I think I really want to stick this morning because I think we're preventing it. And it's number one is deep sleep, deep restful sleep. Do you know why? When does your body really repair? When does it heal, restore, renew? Right now? No, when we sleep. And that's another thing I miss about fasting. Talk about deep sleep. Like it'd be nine o'clock, I'm just like out, out completely till 3.30, four in the morning. I just wake up, I don't need coffee. I get up, I go do whatever. Four in the morning. That deep REM sleep where the body is just, and it'll wake you up. It'll wake you up. Your body will wake you up when it's ready. So this is from Mark Stipek. You can see he has a PhD in longevity. Sleep and heart health. During sleep, your body releases hormones. Some of them keep your heart and blood vessels healthy. A lack of sleep deprives you of these hormones. Any moms out there with young kids? Just had a baby, you know exactly what I'm talking about. What about sleep and blood sugar regulation? See, you're hearing a lot about blood sugar, aren't you, lately? Glucose, blood sugar. The reason is this is a big problem. Because you eat sugar, what happens? Insulin's released. What does insulin tell your body to do if you don't need that energy? More insulin, more insulin, more insulin. And what was the thought of the day when I was in the fitness industry? I told thousands of people this. Now I wish I could take it back. You ready for this? You better be eating every two and a half hours. Oh, God, that just hurts to say it. What's the thought? Keep your metabolic rate up. Keep your metabolism coming up. And there's a little truth to that because your body, 50% of your energy comes from consuming and digesting food. So you're keeping your metabolic rate up, but I'm also keeping my insulin up. I'm eating, here comes insulin. I'm eating, here comes insulin. I'm eating, here comes insulin, especially if your body can't utilize it right then. It's not an immediate need. For example, I'll just share this with you. This is grapefruit juice I made this morning. I'm gonna give it. This would not be good sitting down watching TV to have this. There's about 90, 100 calories here. But right now I could take sips, while speaking for two hours, and it's very beneficial because it fuels that immediate need. I need it now. That's the whole point. It's not gonna be stored as fast. I'm gonna spike insulin. I need that, that burst of energy. And being more strategic too. I mean, look at pictures from the 1940s and 50s. Rarely would you see anyone overweight. Rarely. Why? Because they're moving more. And I remember growing up, some of you do too, it was breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Not breakfast, then a mid-morning snack, then lunch, and afternoon snack, then dinner, then a snack after dinner. Now my kids will have a great, great dinner, and they'll say, can we now go get ice cream? And then they have more ice cream than they do at dinner. When it happens, not very often. So you see how all this is changing. And so sleep is so important. Sleep and inflammation, sleep and stress. And sleep and inflammation is pretty big. Because many of us, as you get over 30, 40, you'll start knowing inflammation. What is inflammation? Why are we chronically inflamed? The word inflammation is, actually it's good to have localized inflammation. Localized inflammation is when your body goes and repairs something. I kick my foot, it goes to my foot and repairs it. But when you have chronic inflammation in your body, everything's sore, everything's hurting, we're feeding our body with stuff it doesn't need, it's already having a hard time processing. Now there's inflammation caused by this, artery walls probably by this and this. And so there's chronic inflammation that most people are dealing with. And so deep sleep can really help with that. Again, sleep repairs, it restores, it revives, it renews. So it begs the question, what affects sleep? Two big S's. Stress. Anybody, is this going 100 miles an hour and it's hard to sleep? Or just me? I gotta do this, I gotta do that, I gotta do this, I gotta do that. So stress and stimulation. That's what they've narrowed it down to. If a person can't sleep, say a child or even a, something is stimulating them, correct? And that's why the big thing with computers and TV at night. I've noticed it myself, I could easily, some nights easily go to bed, let's say 8.30. You know, let's just say I'm tired, long day. But if you start watching something, is it already 10.30? Two hours and you don't go to bed as easily? And so that stimulation, so that's why they do recommend turning those things off, maybe just reading or something calm and you've gotta, that, I forget what kind of rhythm they call it, many of you know that, that sleep, circadian rhythm, yes. It's, that's how we were designed. And when that sun starts going down, the body naturally shuts down. Sometimes we keep it up way past that level. Now, the most convicting part of the stimulation is with what we eat. That's why they also recommend about three hours, I tried that last night, worked pretty good. Three hours before you go to bed, last meal. Whew, not as easy as you think. Yeah, EMFs. I could, like I said, I could be here for 10 hours if we wanna cover all those things. So what happens in this stimulation, and you know, let's say you eat right before you go to bed, all this digestion is taking place. The body's digesting food, and sometimes that didn't sit too well. So by stopping early, let me tell you, it really helps sleep as well. Now, the biggie, don't throw rotten eggs at me. Caffeine, that's just called spade to spade. I just met a lady, she came up, she's only been to church one time, and I was talking about Christian crack, and she said she stopped, and her life has been incredibly changed for the positive. So my thought on this is, if people wanna enjoy it, go for it, you know, sometimes I'll have a little bit in the morning, but if you start having caffeine after lunch, after 11 a.m., 12, it has a half-life. So the stimulating effect that is constantly going on, you try to go to sleep, and your mind is not quite going into deep sleep. Now, I love when people say, Shane, I fall asleep easily. No, it's called adrenal fatigue. You pass out. You don't just go, you don't go to sleep easily because your body passes out, your adrenals are fatigued, and you just, you pass out. And so that's not deep sleep either, because you get up every couple hours, or frequent urination, so you're missing that deep sleep. And so part of it is, I would start weaning off these stimulating things, lots of sugar, lots of caffeine, especially after lunch, and it'll really help your sleep, because that's where healing takes place. You wake up feeling refreshed and revived. Also, if possible, I did this even in construction when I got up at 4.30 in the morning. I would have an alarm clock just in case, but I never allowed that to always just, bah, bah, bah, it just breaks up that pattern. Just like, you want me to do that again? No, you know, you're just out, and then, so the body would wake up naturally in a perfect world, right, it's hard sometimes. But if you can get away from that, but why do we have the alarm clock? Because we're going to sleep too late. And there's really not much we need to watch at nine o'clock or eight o'clock that's really that beneficial. Let's just leave it there. And so if we can get our mind calm and stayed on those things, it would be incredible. Also, I talk about a Sabbath rest often, where just taking a day off electronics, just taking that day, God, although I don't believe we have to follow a Sabbath like the Old Testament, Sabbath, having church on Sabbath, I believe that the Sabbath rest is an important principle. When God lays down principles, they're very important. So this gives the body time to rest and recuperate, don't have to go on social media, just enjoy that day and rest in it, and then it kind of helps reset for the next day. So then the next thing is where I'm going to spend a little bit of time, the one, two, threes of correct nutrition, correct nutrition. And so by most of you came here, I have a feeling. Good reminder though, man-made food is dead. It doesn't give life. Here's the problem we're having. Doritos, but they are organic Doritos. There's no life giving things in there, really. It's just a lot of, you know, I could read the ingredients to you, but it wouldn't be too, but it's just, there's nothing in that really the body's like, ah, I can kind of use this as carbohydrates, as energy. This is enriched with these vitamins, so I can kind of take that, but synthetic vitamins aren't as good as the natural. And I can make this work because I'm fearfully, wonderfully made, but it's not giving me much life versus an apple cut up with some almond butter on it. There's life, the pectin, the nutrients, the enzymes, the fat, the good fat, the nut butter. See, this is giving life, this one's taking away. And I would say a lot of the public school problems, a lot of it, have you seen what they're feeding them? It's unbelievable. Flavored milk? And these things, and so I believe it's leading to a lot of the attention deficit disorders, too. What we're feeding, the food coloring, the chemicals. These things have a effect on the body. First Corinthians 10.31. Therefore, whatever you do, whatever you eat or drink, do it to the glory of God. And then another key verse, but I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified. So, here's what the Bible says what we should be eating. You ready? Are you sure? All I'm gonna do is talk about Scripture, and I can already see the emails coming in. Yeah, but. Well, fortunately, with the Bible, you can't yeah, but. It's, I'm gonna lay it out, and you take it to the Lord. You do what is best for you. In the beginning, God said, I have given you tri-tip and chicken tenders. I have given you every plant-yielding seed that is on the surface of the earth, every tree which has fruit. It shall be food for you, and every beast of the earth, and every bird of the sky, and everything that moves on the earth that has life, I have given them every green plant. Isn't it interesting, even animals? That's what we ate, folks. God didn't change his mind for about 1,500 years. Plants, why? Because the whole, the enzymes, the phytochemicals, the life-giving nutrients from all these different things come from the life of the plant, life of the tree, life of the fruit, and that gives life. That's how you were created. That's how we were created. And Daniel, we saw in the Old Testament, ate plants. And to me, it's interesting that God blesses those fasts where only vegetables are consumed. I don't find a fast in the Bible where he blesses a meat diet. It's always because, why? Meat aligns with our animalistic nature more so. When you became fat, God would say, throughout the Old Testament, you became fat and strong, gluttony over meat. When the children of Israel, they stopped craving the bread from heaven and began to lust after meat. God shoved quail down their throat. So don't worry, meat lovers, I'm getting there. Hold on. What's interesting for me is we eat plants, and then in a minute, we'll see God gives permission for meat, but then depending on your view of the millennial kingdom or different things, we're now a lion or a wolf will lay down with a calf, or a lion, yeah. Lion will lay down, no, the wolf, I think, the wolf will lay down with the lamb, something like that, because I get Jesus, lion and lamb, but, and they will not eat each other. They'll be harmed. A kid can put his hand in a viper's den, and so then are they back to eating plants again? Because in Revelation, it talks about they will eat from the tree, 12 trees, giving life. Just throwing it out there. I don't know what to do with it either. It's just interesting. So when God fed the children of Israel, as I said, in the wilderness, he provided bread from heaven known as manna. It had the appearance of, they call it beldium, B-D-E-L-L-I-U-M, beldium. It had the taste of, it was like bread, and it tasted like honey. And then God brought in the quail because they lusted for meat. And then a favorite one, actually there's one on the next slide, that there's actually a bread named after it. It's not very good, but I forced myself to eat it because it's healthy. Ezekiel bread. Take wheat and barley, take beans and lentils, millet and spelt. Oh, I'm making the carnivore and keto people upset right now. Oh, I can't believe that, Shane. That's the worst thing you can eat. Actually, it's not. If you're moving, if you're active, if it's nutritious, it's not a bad thing. Put them in a storage jar and use them to make bread for yourself. See, that kind of bread, homemade bread, the yeast, the natural ingredients, I had a feeling those people probably moved a little bit more. No cars? Maybe a horse? So see, I also have to remember that. I also don't think we necessarily would eat as many carbohydrates as they did because we don't burn nearly as much as they did. So you have to be strategic about it. You have to understand, I can't eat all this stuff if I'm not 18 again on a baseball team or football team. We have to be strategic in what we do. So God gave us these items. But then we see in the Old Testament, they ate meat often, and Jesus ate meat, correct? Fish, there's probably lamb at Passover. He divided the fish. And so what's going on? Well, we see in Genesis 9, I think I have it up there. Genesis 9, 3, God said, everything that lives and moves about you will be food for you. Just as I gave you green plants, now I give you everything. Isn't this interesting? It's also interesting that now a man's age is not gonna be over 120. Does this new change with the atmosphere, different things affect our DNA? Now we die younger. We don't know exactly what happened. We don't know, could it possibly due to the soil corruption? I mean, after the flood, there's not a lot of soil. There's not a lot of things to eat. Could that be one reason? And what meat eaters will say about those who eat mainly plant-based is you miss some vitamins, B12, for example, the B vitamins. But did you know that B12 comes from the soil? It's a bacteria in the soil. So if they were in the soil a lot, there was no concrete or streets. They're in the soil, their kids are playing in the soil. Could they be getting this B12 from plants? And so we just don't know. We say, okay, God allowed people to eat meat now. But the meat was clean and they would eat animals that ate, actually the animals would eat grass and they would eat the animal. Very, you don't see it too often that it's a really good idea to eat, for example, bear because the stuff bears eat, I mean, it's like you're basically eating what the animal eats and you're eating dead, decaying flesh. And it's a little interesting, it's a little gross. But those hardliners, you saw Game Changers, probably many of you Arnold Schwarzenegger's movie and T. Campbell and Estocine, I think his name is. I talked to him on email a few years ago too when I was writing a book. And Medugal and the plant-based craze. And there's a lot of good stuff on that. There's a lot of information that makes sense. And I don't think a person's gonna go wrong if they go that route. But what I've noticed as well, I talked to Karen about this too, is I look at all these plant-based people that I look up to, of course, and I know some of them. I mentioned Alan Goldhammer, mainly the fasting clinics, Michael Clapper, they'll get you on plant-based leaving the fasting clinic. And very wise, very good idea because you wanna keep the results. But then you look at, say, a guy like Mark Sisson. He's head of Primal Nutrition, or you name it. And it looks like those who add a little bit of meat but eat very clean are just more structurally bigger and stronger and they look healthier in their face and their coloring. It looks like those, but not a lot of meat. Meat, lots of veggies, lots of fruit, lots of big salads. And it seems like there's a balance there of that protein that really seems to matter. Now, this group will say, Joel Fuhrman, for example, you don't need much protein. You just only need like 10% and it's overrated. And this group says, no, it's not overrated. So I just look at Scripture. What's Scripture say? God says, now we can eat meat. Now, but here's the thing. Like when I ask all these studies, like Game Changers, whoever, they go from, let's say they did like a fire department, ate mainly meat and then they switched into plant-based. Their blood looks better, everything looks better. Like, okay, what else were they eating though? Hamburgers, hot dogs, potato chips. I mean, you can't just, you gotta, to really do the study well, what you'd have to do is compare plant whole-based with those who have plant whole-based and a little bit of meat. Then let's see, they're comparing apples and oranges. Because obviously, if somebody changes that kind of diet, they're gonna feel and look a lot better. Because they're getting rid of, most people that go on a whole plant-based program are changing everything about their diet. So of course, it's better results. But could you have that as well as adding? Walter Longo, for example, from USC, he recommends a little bit of salmon, a couple times a week, some fish, some lean white meat to be added to that. He's head of longevity. It's like, what, these guys, can they ever get on the same page? It's hard because there's different studies, different people have different results. And so I am, can't say a person should not eat meat. Now, do people eat way too much meat? Absolutely. Do they eat meat that is not clean and good for them? Absolutely. See, that's part of the problem too. Can you imagine the lamb out there, grass-fed, eating the grass, and they would kill that lamb, and everything was very nutritious, nutritionally dense. Now the lamb could be, the living conditions, the GMO corn, the antibiotics, the steroids, the hormones, this thing that we're now eating is very toxic. So I think that's what's happening. So I would recommend you don't eat a lot of meat and dairy if it's toxic, if it's the kind that's processed. For example, do you ever see ultra-pasteurized on your milk? It's not a good thing. That means I heated this bad boy up to like 380 degrees for 15 minutes. Everything is gone. Everything good is gone. So what am I doing then? You're drinking sugar water. Is it not true? Sure, you might get a little bit of this, but that's what milk is, ultra-pasteurized. Now I don't recommend, I won't throw it out there because people get all worked up about it, but if you look at like raw goat milk, just compare the nutritional value, it's off the chart compared to pasteurized. But because somebody got sick from bad milk, now all of us have pasteurized it. Did you know in California that almonds are pasteurized? Why? Because somebody got sick on raw almonds. And see, we've taken all these things as God designed it, and I try not to have much meat or dairy. I bought some raw goat cheese, and that's what I'll eat if I'm gonna eat some milk and dairy because all the toxins and things that are in meat and dairy. So that's why there's this big debate. I'm not a meat and dairy person if you're eating that kind of stuff. It's not good for you. I mean, we can talk about IGF-1, I mentioned earlier, insulin-like growth factor one. That, along with sugar, insulin-like growth factor is a growth hormone. And if you have cancer cells, what's gonna happen? Grow them. And cancer feeds off of glucose. And so that would take a whole nother seminar to do that. But it has to be whole, natural, plant-based food, and some meat thrown in, if you want me to get right to the point. I had some lamb Tuesday. I had a bit, the salad is huge, a lot of fiber content, and I don't eat perfectly. Sometimes I'll blow it. You know, I might have, you know, what you guys have. But, right, you know, I might, I mean, no, but what you guys, what do you normally have? My daughter tried to get me to go to Chick-fil-A the other day, yesterday or the day before. They taste good, but then the salt, the sodium, the different things. So anyway, getting back on track here, God switched, He said, and also remember, the people moved a lot. They moved a lot, and meat was super clean. So I believe, here's what it looks like. Here's the world, the flood has destroyed just about everything. Now you are allowed to eat meat in this fallen, sinful state. The meat was clean. They're moving all the time. If you're moving a lot, if you're very active, that cholesterol, also, and different things is not gonna affect your arteries the way it does someone who's not doing much. It just gets clogged in the arteries. But when you're moving and your oxygen uptake is high, 95, 98%, oxygen you're taking, that oxygen really helps the blood flow, and now your blood is cleansing itself. Then you bring in fasting that absolutely removes the plaque from the arteries. And so you see how all this is working. So the next verse I wanna put up there is found in 1 Timothy. This is why I don't get too dogmatic. Oh, it's already up there. Paul said that in the last days, deceiving spirits will command people to abstain from certain foods. This is why I kind of, I get alarm bells going up here when Christians really say you shouldn't be eating this. This is for, they get really radical about it. Because God says you shouldn't deprive people of food which God created to be received with thanksgiving. And so, for example, I would have a small chicken breast, very clean, with a huge salad and avocado as dinner. Maybe a side of beans. And so you have a little bit of that meat, but you make, see if you're getting enough plant food, you're gonna see a big difference. The problem is, let's be honest, it's hard. Most of us don't do that. And so you have to be strategic about it. Right now we have a lot of plant food cut up in mason jars. And they last about five or six days. So you pour cucumbers in. You pour the lettuce in. You pour the bell peppers in. You pour the mushrooms in. And you already have the salad made because of the preparation you did the week earlier. And so you have to be strategic. And then you're full. Guess what? You don't crave sugar and stuff as much. Why? Because now you've been satisfied. The nutrient density is big, large and rich. Now you don't desire the, that's why a lot of us desire sugar and more because we're not getting. We're not getting those things from our food. Now we want more of these things, more sugar, more food, because I didn't meet my nutritional needs during this course of eating. So here's the key. A diet consisting, a diet consisting, I changed the wording around a little bit, so just listen. A diet consisting of God-given, unprocessed, life-giving food in moderation while allowing for times of fasting is the key. I could have just said that when I came up and sit down. Now if you can focus on that, and if you've seen it before, we release it a few times. It's called the Pantry Pastor. I went to a house and threw out everything in the pantry and everything in the refrigerator and started back over. Some of you might need to do that. Out of sight, out of mind. And you start getting your body these healing things that you need. Like in our pantry, lots of walnuts, lots of pecans, lots of cashews, almond butter. If we have sourdough bread, organic sourdough bread, or Ezekiel bread, soups, lentils. And you're not gonna, I'm telling you, if I had those Barks chocolate things, you ever seen Barks at the store? Barks, almond, pretzel, chocolate, chocolate doughnuts. If I had Captain Crunch, if that's in the pantry, guess where I'm gonna go? I'm not that strong. You're constantly in front of, oh look, a Krispy Kreme. And a quart of milk. Out of sight, out of mind. God-given, unprocessed food. Now I should talk about unprocessed for a minute. Boxed, packaged. But I do have canned things sometimes, olives or beans or things. So basically, how crazy do you wanna get? That's why I don't wanna push anything on you. You gotta take it to the Lord. You gotta do what works for you. Because you can get, you think I'm hardcore. You haven't seen nothing yet. I can introduce you to people who've never even eaten meat. They've never got off their diet in 40 years. Alan Goldhammer, watch a video of his. He's been on his diet for 40 years. Perfect, plant-based, organic, da-da-da-da-da. They weigh their, not him, but some people weigh their rice. I got my half a cup of rice. I got my organic chicken breasts. I got my cut asparagus. That's all. And they're just by the T. They're just on it. But I can't live like that. And so you have to find what works for you. But if you focused on, most of the time, unprocessed. Meaning, did God create it or did man? I mean, cereal in a box. But Shane, it says organic. Yeah, organic sugar. And on that note, man, you know this is coming up in a minute. But let me get to this, and I'll get to that in a minute. So I already, I think I talked about enough with the meat issue. The mess with meat, it depends on who pays for the study. The sugar industry's against the meat and dairy. Meat and dairy against the sugar industry. But what happens in the meat department is they do observational studies. What that means is, hey, tell us what you eat. And what they find is most people who took a survey, they have meat, they're high in meat in their diet, they tend to experience more cardiovascular disease. But to me, that tells you nothing. They're probably also eating donuts. They don't exercise. They don't, they junk all the time. How is that effective? And that's why it's called an observational study. We'll take a survey, and most people do eat meat. Most people do. So to me, these things just don't make sense where we get a lot of the information from. But again, the cholesterol, the tribes in Africa, what about Eskimos? Do you know a lot of them are very healthy when they eat lots of meat and fat? It's natural. Now I'm not recommending that because I think you can look at Papua New Guinea as well. They have a study out where all they eat is sweet potatoes. Four, five, six different kinds of sweet potatoes, potatoes all day long. That would drive the carbohydrate nuts crazy. No carbs, no carbs, no carbs. The keto people. Well, Papua New Guinea, and they look fine. 60 years old, all their teeth are there, white teeth, lots of energy. But remember, all these types of examples, they're lean, they're active, and it's unprocessed, God-given food. That's really the key. Is it not? That is the key. And then the next point on this food, sugar fascinates before... I wish I could say the average American had this once a year, once every six months. Right now, current statistics show that this is once every month or two. You, me, are you kidding me? And meat's the problem? Now, some of it is. Again, I'm not a big fan of meat and dairy unless it's really clean in moderation. But this, folks, this is a big deal. You don't believe me? Look in your organic strawberry jelly. What? Second ingredient, ketchup, barbecue sauce. Can I keep going? Bread, for the love of God. I went to Costco, organic, whole wheat bread, four grams in one slice? How do you fit a teaspoon of sugar in a slice of bread? So I had it up in my head. Okay, the bread, two pieces of bread, and the jelly, I just had four teaspoons of sugar in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And so the average, I think they're up to like 40 teaspoons of sugar a day. And I just kind of, this is a reminder in case I get thirsty, number one. But number two is, the juice is sugar. So you have to be very strategic with juice. And if you have questions about juice fasting, all the different things, that's why I made the books available for free on your way out, I talk a lot more about that. You gotta be careful with that, because it's fructose, it's sugar, it still spikes insulin levels, and still can wreak havoc on the body. If you were to do juicing, I would do mainly greens, and just add a little bit of apple or something if you need that flavor. But look at the sugar. We hear sugar, sugar, sugar all the time, right? This is from the National Library of Medicine. Not only do added sugars displace nutritional superior foods in the diet, you see that? Let's stop there for a minute. When I choose a sugary treat, instead of a nutritionally dense treat, I miss those vital nutrients, and I take the sugar, and it doesn't meet my nutritional need at all. Empty calories. And now it starts taking away from the body. But they may also deplete nutrients from other foods that have been consumed, as well as from the body's stores, in order to enable their proper oxidation and liberate their calories as energy. In other words, I just ate something good earlier, I take in this ton of sugar, now the sugar, as it's being processed, oxidized, is being processed, now it's taking these nutrients, the good stuff that I just ate, because it needs those nutrients to be processed in the body. So it robs the body, and it doesn't give the body what it needs. That's why it's so deadly and damning. It just, especially not in moderation. And it's, I honestly didn't know how much it was in until you start looking at the labels. Everything. And you know, there's something called, I think it's the bliss spot. I don't know if we have it up there at all. Oh, the bliss point. Did you know that scientists work for the food companies? How many people didn't know that? The big food companies have scientists working for them. What do they do? They find the bliss point. They find that point where, ah, it's just not too sweet, not too tart. They find that point to where we want it, it registers the brain, and they lead us, they addict us to it. Can you have just one Dorito? Two Doritos? Three? The coloring. Everything from the coloring to the flavoring is designed to draw you in. Obesity is a metabolic response to high insulin. Obesity is a metabolic response to high insulin. So if we're putting on weight, it's because insulin is storing that weight. And insulin is a response to sugar and what we're consuming, what we're eating. And then the next point. If we miss this one, I think we've missed a lot. Number three, change your oil often. Change your oil often. Omega-6 consumption has skyrocketed. Many consume around 700 calories a day from refined oils. This is from the paleomom.com. While consuming already oxidized oils is bad, meaning they've been heated, they've been treated, they have chemicals, they have solvents. Did you know that? When you see safflower oil, canola oil, all these supposedly vegetable oils, they've been heated and treated and chemicals are used to remove the rancid smell. And then they put it in everything from chips and cookies and crackers and then we eat it. And we weren't designed to eat this garbage. And so now the oxidation of fats inside our body is also highly problematic. One of the ways a high omega-6 intake may contribute to cancer is by increasing the proportion of omega-6 in our cell membranes leading to lipid perioxidation, basically the breakdown of fat, and ultimately changes the DNA. And there are studies on this. We don't just read a quote. I've watched YouTube clips and read studies and surveys, not surveys, but what do they call those? Yeah, the research departments from different medical institutes are releasing these studies where they'll find when refined oils increase, that's when a lot of the problems increase as well. And the big deal about omega-6, omega-3, some of you might know, I don't wanna go into a lot of detail, but when you offset that balance and it's tons of omega-6 and it doesn't balance out with the omega-3, it's very hard on your body. Your body has that perfect match of omega-6 and omega-3 to complement each other. Well, Shane, how do I get that? From God-given food. Nuts, everything has a perfect balance as God designed it. So what they do is they take this oil, refine this oil, and you can buy those big 10-gallon things at Costco, not good. And those are refined oils. And so what those oils do is we take them in chips and crackers, salad dressing, everything, and this oil, 700 calories just from this oil that is not good for the body. So now you have this oil, you have the sugar, you can see where everything's going. All this processed food is doing a lot of damage. Calories and hormone optimization. I mentioned Dr. Daniel Pompa. He's got good information. If you want more information on all these things, how they work together. So you see the connection here so far. Whole, unprocessed, natural, God-given food. Not these foods that are manipulated. And that's why it's called refined vegetable oils. They heat it up to a very, very high temperature. Then it's rancid, it smells. And to remove the smell, they use solvent. The solvent then, this chemical, removes the smell, and then they'll put it in the potato chips. So just because it says safflower oil. And again, you can talk to Karen. She's got all the information on the right oils. Basically, you hear a lot about avocado oil, coconut oil, olive oil. And even if you see cold pressed, what does that mean? They're not using heat. It's just cold, like squeezing olives. The way God designed it, that's how they would do it. They would, right, olive oils. Here comes the oil, or grapes, grape juice. And it's pulling it out the right way. So again, you can start writing down if you have questions. I'm gonna try to answer those in a minute. But with this thing with oils, you have to just read the ingredients. You'll be surprised at how much sugar is in it. Why is sugar in chips? So you see, everything we're eating. Everything. Except, of course, maybe meat and the dairy though, the lactose. And then the next point. Feast on fasting. Feast on fasting. Did you know fasting doesn't kill us? Overconsumption does. We were designed to fast. You were actually created to fast. How do we know? Because how the body is designed. Stores the energy if we take too much. And then when we need that energy, for thousands of years, they had to walk. They wouldn't eat for a day or two. And the body was designed to switch the energy sources. Disease is often a problem of toxicity created by what we consume, ingest, or breathe, correct? We all know this. What we breathe, cigarette smoke, or the environment. What we take in, what we consume, and then fasting is the detox solution. Dr. J.H. Tilden said, after 55 years of sojourning in the wilderness of medical therapeutics, I am forced to declare that fasting is the only reliable, specific, therapeutic eliminate known to man. He has an incredible book on fasting as well. Dr. Joel Fuhrman, the body's wondrous ability to self-digest and destroy needless tissues such as fat, tumors, blood vessel plaque, and other non-essential and diseased tissues comes through fasting. So what fasting does, let's say your body needs energy. Three, four days into it, like I talked about the ketogenic diet, where's it get it from? It'll break down your diseased tissue. It'll break down, that's why some cancer cells are removed during fasting. Because the body says, ah, I'm gonna consume this. It's something that is not good for the body and it goes and begins to consume things. The arteries, he talks about the plaque in the arteries, that is broken down and converted to fuel as well. Then the next slide on this area of fasting. The National Center for Biotechnology Information. Aging is characterized by an accumulation of molecule damage, molecular damage, progressive failure of maintenance and repair and consequent onset of age-related illnesses. I'm not gonna read the rest, you can see it up there. But what is the solution then? Fasting, and I'm not about reversing aging because that's not gonna happen. God said it, we've got 120 years, we don't even live to see that. It's the max, we digress, we're getting older. There's nothing we can do to prevent that. But you can slow it down. You can get, I'm telling you, I feel better now than I did a year or two ago because you're slowing down that process. I'm leaking a lot of details about telomeres at the end of the DNA strand, those are repaired. Stem cells, those are created from fasting. So many benefits on fasting that shouldn't be overlooked, it should be part of what we do. Next screen. Okay, that's the one. 45 days ago, 230 pounds, that one I was at about 193, so 37 pounds, and wanted to show you just what fasting did. And it was difficult, it was tough. Oh, don't clap, because it was a nightmare in one hand. It was a blessing and a nightmare, but God sustained me. God got me through it. Now, the reason I don't recommend necessarily what I did is because God has been working in my heart for five years. I'll see it in the Bible, 40 days. I'm like, you gotta be crazy. That's not, that devil is a liar. Jesus, I'm not doing that, you gotta be kidding me. And then so much confirmation, I can't even get into all the details, but you're reading books and Scripture confirming, God's just putting it in my heart. You know, God put something in your heart, and so I prepared myself for it. The power of the made-up mind is really the big deal. Because you know, a couple days in, there's, ah, forget it, I'll do it next week. Or my favorite, I'll do it January 1st. I got seven months in. That's what most people do, January 1st, and they blow it all year. Biblically speaking, I think the fasted lifestyle is not only fasting all the time, but denying the flesh, putting your body in the right state to receive physically and eat proper nutrition. And it just, I'm just, as a living witness, telling you I feel so much better physically and spiritually, because it's all interwoven. When I just give up to the lust of the flesh, King's stomach is on the throne, because I will gravitate towards eating too much every day, without a shadow of a doubt. Everything sounds good when I'm a little bit hungry, and you start just eating too much. And putting that in check can really, really make a big difference. And so, yeah, I have these numbers. You can see the blood pressure dropped quite considerably, resting pulse dropped, eradicated addiction to coffee and sugar. My body felt much better, inflammation to back pain. My joints, everything felt a lot better. Now, believe it or not, it's starting to hurt a little bit more again when you reintroduce food. There's just no way to do that, especially with glucose and carbohydrates. It kind of, for some reason, rushes in in the inflamed areas. And so, you know, it's a process. It's a way to reset the body. 10 physical benefits of fasting. 10 physical benefits of fasting. It lowers blood pressure. It's the best way to reduce weight and maintain healthy weight. Fasting rejuvenates the body. Fasting helps eliminate inflammation. Fasting helps cardiovascular disease. Fasting leads to mental clarity and brain health. Fasting can shrink certain tumors. Been researched many times over. Fasting is very effective in offsetting diabetes. Why is that? Because now you're not taking in any glucose. Glucose is a sworn enemy to diabetes type two. Here comes the sugar. I've abused my body so much, my cells are now insulin resistant. Resistant, I can't take it in, so now I have to take injections and get more insulin. So fasting can really stop that and put that on hold. And again, that's why all the books are free. I don't want to keep mentioning this, but it's because you have so many questions. What about this type of fasting? What about juicing? What about intermittent fasting? What about one meal a day? What about this? What about this? I answered all of those in the books to give you a program that you can really shoot for that works. Fasting helps with depression and anxiety. It's amazing how you're, the reason is food affects chemicals in our body. Hormone levels, serotonin, dopamine, all the other hormones I've mentioned. Food affects those. So when you remove those things, your body can now reset and begin to heal certain areas. Now there's wide mood swings on fasting. Ah, sad and then happy and then mad and it's like all this, but the body is leveling out a lot of things. And in one of the books I have, I think his name is Dr. Yuri from Russia, how he cured schizophrenia. Cured it in 85% of his patients by fasting. But see, if you understand how the body's made, it really makes a lot of sense because you realize that most disease is created by what we consume, correct? Heart disease, diabetes, cancer. I mean, just about every type, Alzheimer's, did you know that? What they're finding is what happens is a lot of these toxins, aluminums and the toxins, they break the blood brain barrier that's supposed to help the brain. They break through it and they get to the brain. And so if they do an MRI on those with Alzheimer's or dementia, you can see how the heavy metals and different things have infiltrated the brain or the neurons have been warped and damaged by nutrition, by diet. And that's one of the things, I'm not gonna get onto either side, but for those, not necessarily the COVID vaccine, but other vaccines, vaccines just don't have, let's say if you get a flu vaccine, it just doesn't have a sample of the flu in it, like a dead cell, the flu, or a barely alive flu disease virus that gets into your body. Your body says, oh, that's not good. I need to fight against it. Every vaccine will have what they call adjunct agents. You can't just put the disease in there. You have to have the stem cell for the abortive feces of the child. That's why they do that is because that virus, this vaccine now, that's how it's gonna get into the cells of your body. That's the delivery mechanism. So when they got thermosol, I think it was, not silver, what's the other one? Mercury. And that's why they put these things in vaccines is that's the delivery system. And so that's why they have, if you look at the ingredients, you'll see that these things, and now they want kids to have a horrendous amount of these injections taken in the body. It's not just a little bacteria. They're putting all of that adjunct agents into the body. And it sometimes doesn't get rid of those things. It will store them in the fat and in the brain tissue and different things. And so you can see a lot of what we're dealing with has to do with this of what we're ingesting. Now, here's what's exciting. 10 spiritual benefits of fasting. Fasting often leads to an awakening, a renewal, a spiritual restoration. Now it's tough, it's difficult. Sometimes you don't feel it right then. It's a process. And at the end of that, there's that fruit. There's that light at the end of the tunnel. Fasting is a powerful prayer of intercession. Fasting intensifies prayer. Fasting removes pride. Fasting ushers in humility. Fasting increases faith. Fasting aids in overcoming obstacles. Fasting crucifies the flesh. It breaks bad habits. Fasting and the anointing of God go hand in hand. Fasting helps to overcome unbelief. Fasting opens the door that might not otherwise be open. Now what you're doing, you're not making God do something. Oh, I did this, now you gotta do this. What it is, it's humbling yourself and positioning your heart in such a way to hear better from God. It's a cry of desperation. God, I'm so desperate. I need you to move in this area. I'm so desperate, I'm willing to go without. And you can look throughout the Old Testament, just research on fasting, fasting, fasting, fasting. Jesus, why did he fast for 40 days? Isn't that odd? Why would the Bible, many accounts, talk about Jesus fasting 40 days if it had no significance? Hey, by the way, I'm gonna go out in the wilderness for a while. I'll see you later. Why? It was an empowerment for his ministry. It's pretty clear on that. Scripture says, and he came out in the fullness of the Spirit. He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. I'm gonna read a quick paraphrase from Andrew Murray. The man who has not given the body over to the Spirit to do his work, what a trouble the body gives him. How much sin comes out of the body. Many Christians never understand that its deeds of the body must be made dead. A man may be living in victory over some sin, but through the pleasure of overconsumption, the devil may get power over his flesh. When you think you're feeding the body, you're feeding the flesh, you're strengthening it by gratifying the appetite. Now, what's hard is, over the years, it has developed where people think, you know, food is bad, eating is, all material things are bad, and you can't enjoy food, and we don't see that in the Bible. We see that there are times of feast and times of famine. We see that we are to enjoy food and be thankful for that food, and to not, food in itself isn't bad, just like money isn't bad. You know the Bible doesn't say money's bad? The love of money, the love of food. You see, the exchange, the love, I've gotta have it. The gluttony, the overconsumption, the overindulgence, I gotta have this. It's that, and that's what, the lust of the flesh, correct? We'll drive 20 minutes to get our favorite, you know what? Like my kids at night, it's 7.30 at night, it's dark out, and you want us to go to Vons and get ice cream? I gotta have it, and that's, the lust issue is what God is wanting to deal with in our hearts. And then number four, activate more activity. Who has heard this until they're blue in the face? More activity, why is that though? Because exercise helps prevent the hardening of the arteries. There's no, high blood pressure is brought down. You know what high blood pressure is? You imagine, do you ever have a water hose at the end, you have a valve where you can turn it off, and you just leave the water hose on full pressure, and the water hose is all, it's hard? And that's what the arteries are like, that's what high blood pressure, it's hard on the arteries, and eventually they're gonna burst. Aneurysm are different things. And so that's why lower blood pressure makes the arteries last longer. And that's what activity does. Now, none of these things are bulletproof. Anybody can end up having cancer, or dying of a heart attack, and be pretty good at their diet and exercise, we see that all the time. I've seen, I did, when I was researching, some of the oldest people in the world, this is where you know genetics plays a little bit of a role. Man, they have their scotch and their cigar every day. This little old lady, 101 years old, probably 95 pounds, has her little wine and a cigar. Doesn't exercise, doesn't eat good, like that is pure genetics right there, let me tell you. And genetics does play a role. A lot of you guys see, if you've seen those big guys, you know like The Rock, you know Dwayne Johnson, most people can't get like that. I tried, and I was too chubby. A lot of it has to do with muscle cell fibers, and cellular volumization, and how many cells you have, and the muscle bellies, and the aesthetics of the body. A lot of it has, and maybe there's a genetic predisposition to where the muscles are gonna get really big. When I was growing up, a guy named by the name of Ronnie Coleman, 305 pounds, and looks like just, man, his 24-inch arms, just enormous guy, and now he's walking, I think, with a walker, and he's still really big. But you know, he just, he ate pizza and hamburgers, he talked about it, he wins Mr. Olympia. He didn't even start till he was in his 20s. And that's not a good goal to shoot for, I don't think, for people, but it shows you genetics definitely plays a role in some of these things. But don't let it be, don't let that be your way out. Well, I'm just not genetically gifted. My parents weren't genetically gifted. I'm always bound to keep this weight on. That's not true. For example, I've heard people use this example, and I don't like using it, so please hear my heart. But when they did a study of the concentration counts, I think they're at 900 to 1,000 calories a day. Of course, they work, too, but there's not one obese person. Six million or so, there's no, but nobody was obese. But see, you hear that argument, no matter what I eat, if I eat nothing, my body holds on to it, that's not true. There's no way in the world your body will hold on and you won't lose weight, especially with fasting and minimizing your caloric intake. But that's why you have to be careful, too, in minimizing caloric intake, is your body metabolism will slow down, and there's so much that goes on to this, and I'll answer those questions in a minute for those who wanna stay. Inactivity leads to weight gain and sluggish blood flow. Every pound of fat, you know how much a pound of fat is? Every pound of fat requires a few miles of blood vessels. Yeah, I had to check this about three different times to make sure, because they're so small, those blood vessels. So every pound of fat, just think of how much we're increasing this stress on the heart. One thing that really, really blew my mind was I figured out, okay, if my resting pulse rate dropped that much, that means my heart is beating 28,000 times less a day. Huh, that's what I did. I did my calculator twice. I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. But it matters, right? 15, 20 times less a minute? Times that over a course of an hour? Times that by 24 hours? And so all these things are, that's why activity is so important, exercise is so important. And many, I mean, cognitive thinking, the endorphins, did you know it increases serotonin? You feel better? For example, it plays a big role. How many of you are tired, could fall asleep right now, and yawning? What's the difference? Why am I not? I could go jog right now, I'm not even tired whatsoever. Exactly, you're sitting, relaxing, air conditioning's on. He's getting boring. Or he reached somewhere. Where I'm staying active. See the difference? It plays a big role. It also gives more oxygen to the cells. Inactivity damages the body, even at the cellular level. So I'm gonna give you simple tips. This is what I've been doing too. You have to schedule it in. Isn't it sad we have to schedule inactivity? For thousands of years, they did not schedule inactivity. It was, hey, I'm gonna meet you, I gotta walk six miles. Or I've gotta go work on the farm. They were active. And it's funny, you'll hear, somebody said, yeah, but Shane, lookit, we're living longer now. But you have to realize, when they did those types of studies, like in the 1800s or so, a lot of parents, you know this, right, lost a couple kids at birth, or at two months. So what they do is they take the total death rate of ages, and then they balance it out and say, oh, see, we're living longer. Well, they also died a lot younger from these different things, with the Black Plague, when it came in. And the numbers are often, now we do live longer, but is it good living? Is the last 10 years or 15 years of many lives, is that the best years of their life? They feel great and run around with their grandkids? No, it's often the opposite. The last 10 years are spent to keep us alive, on ventilators or hospice or whatever it is. Active lifestyle, what I often do, my kids don't like it, and my wife doesn't use them, but I'll park far. Like if I'm going in the mall, I'll park over by Keller Williams. And by the time I go, I got the ring in the app, you know, I walked a mile, just going to the mall. Or Target, way out in the park, and just, but you see, you gotta be active, more active, and you feel better, you feel much better. But you have to be strategic, because what do we wanna do? That feels better. King's stomach says, feed me, lazy flesh says, let's sit here for two hours. So you have to tell your body what to do, it can't tell you what to do. If my body tells me what to do, I'm in trouble. Again, a spiritual discipline, is it not? Involve your kids, limit electronics. One of our daughters, now I'll tell her, okay, half hour, and then you're gonna go jump on the trampoline for a half hour, like three times a day. You've gotta be proactive, let's go on a bike ride, let's get, you've gotta get active, you've gotta, because the body is just breaking down. Is this getting better or worse? What is Facebook doing now, the metaverse? What is that, you put this, you wear this thing, and now you can interact with people and sit on your couch? It says you can actually go, like, feel like you're jogging, just sit on your couch and jog. More time on screen, the cars are getting more comfortable. Like even my truck, when I start it in the wintertime, the seat and the steering wheel automatically warm up. And you have to tell your body what to do. One thing I've incorporated that I really like is cold water therapy, you can Google it. Like, have you ever heard of that guy, Wim Hof, the ice man, these guys are crazy. I don't know how he, sits on ice for like an hour and a half. Or he'll go swim in the Antarctic. He actually climbed a lot of Mount Everest in just hiking boots and shorts, no shirt on. It's amazing, or that guy who climbs Yosemite with no ropes, have you ever seen his videos? These guys, I don't even understand where they're, they're not even living on this planet. Anyway, I don't recommend doing what he does. I think it's kind of, it gives into hypnotism and things. But the reason is cold water therapy, what it does, brown fat is produced, immune response is produced. Your body inside the core is heating up and there's a lot of benefits to that. And so, you know, there's a lot of things you can do if you want to do that. My wife said this morning, at 7.30 in the morning, did you go swimming? I did, whoo, I feel great. The pool is like 67. And it took me like a minute and a half, but I felt great, it's invigorating. And if you want more information, you can research it. Just research cold water therapy and how it affects the body. So what I look at is not like some new gimmick. I like, ah, God's smart, look at how he designed us to get through cold seasons, how the body responds. There's an immune response. And when you take vitamin C or echinacea, there's an immune response. It makes your body do certain things. And I don't have time to go into all those things, but it's amazing how God designed it. So I think with being comfortable, the right air conditioning, the right temperature can really downgrade the body sometimes. And getting exposed to cold, did you know the biggest lie for so many years, don't go outside and get cold, it's cold out, you'll get your cold. That's not possible. That you actually don't. I don't want people to get mad at me, but that's just the truth. If you go outside and get cold, you won't catch a cold or pneumonia. Now, if you're sitting out there for a while and you're wet and you're already kind of sickly and different things, yeah, it cannot help things. But sometimes being exposed to the cold can be a really good thing for the body. Because your body says, uh-oh, I have to do something now. And the immune response and your cell, even at the cellular level, what is happening and different things that are going on. And also, I mentioned this so many times before, I didn't want to mention it again. Many of you know, but I try to choose organic when possible, obviously. If you buy grapes or strawberries or blueberries, did you know they're sprayed with about seven or eight different pesticides before you even get them? Fungicides, herbicides, glyphosate, which is in Roundup. Genetically modified food, they're splicing the genes with Roundup Ready. So now you can spray glyphosate, weed killer, on the fruit. It's not gonna die because it's been genetically modified to resist it. Can't make this stuff up. Why, Shane? Correct? So you've gotta be active about your health. Now, I don't buy organic avocados, organic bananas. I mean, the price today, unbelievable. So God knows your heart, do what you can. Don't get carried away and say, Lord, but all of us can make some pretty significant changes. We can definitely choose better and you'll start to feel better. Isn't that interesting? When you feel better, you're making better choices. And what happens when we're not making good choices? We feel, I'm telling you, when I hit 230 pounds, I've got seven indications of diabetes, I'm not feeling very good. I'm a little bit more irritated, people bother me, because you're not happy with yourself. Caffeine, coffee, I remember you have to ask, well, I won't tell you who it is, because it's funny. But this got me started too. Morgan doesn't know this, so I'm just, I'm confessing. A friend of mine, he goes here, he comes in and goes, hey, I just ran into a waiter who also works at Starbucks. He says he sees you every morning getting a little coffee and a chocolate pop, right? So I said, every morning? Give me a break. Like five times in the last two months. But they said, you know how people, every day, I say, all the time. And so I've never been back, I've never done that again, but that was a little, you know, it was a little convicting. See, listening to King's Stomach. And I tried, I tried all different things. I'll get a short coffee, what is that, six ounces? I'll pour out half in the street, have a little cream. I'm like, Lord, just this little bit? But it sounds like an alcoholic, right? Just this one beer? Just this, oh. Just a little bit of skunk bud before I go to bed, just a little, just, and see, it's that same, it's that addictive nature, calling our name. I'm telling you, the struggle is real. I see him every day at Starbucks, give me a break. So, but right, you use those motivating things, the convicting, and my, oh, now I remember the point. The point was, the point was I would do that and it had long-term consequences, because I didn't do that throughout the day. That was my little vice, but then I'd have an organic smoothie I'd have Ezekiel bread with, but that constant caffeine and sugar was what eventually took its toll. Now I'm releasing insulin. Now that sugar makes me eat more. Now I'm gaining weight. You see how that works? And then because I want sugar, I go find some dark chocolate, dip in peanut butter. And you have to have that sugar by two or three because you're crashing. One thing, I don't crash anymore. The fasting, I didn't crash, I didn't have to, sometimes I take hour and a half naps right at lunch, just out cold, deep, the body was repairing. But now I've noticed I don't have to, I don't have, feel, there's not a downtime. I just, the energy's better, and God really, I think, wants to help us in this area because it affects everything. It affects how you treat your spouse, and your kids, and your grand, you don't think that's important? You don't think God cares? Give me a break. And how many people have I, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people I prayed for in the prayer room, and I will continue to do so every Sunday, and we believe that God heals, and we've heard incredible things. But a lot of times, we'll pray for a healing, but I know that God wants them to change their lifestyle. Pray for this, pray for my type two diabetes. I might have to have foot surgery if this doesn't work, and I'm like, okay, but you gotta lose 100 pounds. You gotta stop eating this garbage that's causing it. And we think that, but again, hear my heart, God heals in spite of us. There's some people who can't make changes. I got it. But how many of us are creating the disease that we're living with? This food for thought, not trying to be popular today. And again, activity, compare the 1950s. Look at pictures of New York. They have footage of New York in the 1950s. You won't find hardly anybody overweight. And again, I'm not bashing that. I have a problem with that. I will eat way too much. For example, I ate like 3,500 calories Thursday, and I could feel it. And then yesterday, just went 1,900. I'd say it went to about five, it's last meal at 5.30, small, and felt a lot better, because I told King's stomach, shut your mouth. When you know it's seven o'clock, oh, I gotta get up, have some milk and cereal. It's filling. King's stomach wants to be fed. And if we keep caving into that, we're gonna have the consequences we have now. And then the final thing, I can't spend too much time on, but it's stabilizing stress, stabilizing your stress. Did you know that some stress is needed? You say, stress, stress, stress. Some stress is needed. And when your body feels stress, it's needed. It can go and heal that area. What about when you build muscles? You need that stress. Some stress is better, is good for you. We have to have stress. The way God designed us, and I can't, this would take a while, but let's say I'm feeling stress. Okay, the body releases some things, some hormones and different things. When I talk about there's an immune response, some of your cells, now I think they're called cytokines. It releases some cytokines that go now and fight against the disease. And so stress can really help the body. The right cytokine and the right measures. What about stress? I see a lion, uh-oh. I need to fight and flight. I need to run. The cortisol, the adrenaline, I need to get out of here. And so see, your body can control, or the stress can really help sometimes. But what's hurting us is chronic stress, chronic, all the time stress on the body and our mind. And that's what, imagine an army fighting a battle and they never rest. So that's what's happening. It's a constant state of tension, constant state of tension. Here's that key word again, why it's so important to avoid stimulants. So important, let's just speak Coke, coffee, those things that stimulate, do you know why? What it does, let's just be honest here. Caffeine is a drug, okay? I actually had some this morning, so I'm not putting people down. I had some green tea, a cup of green tea. I don't even feel that compared to coffee, but it has a little bit of caffeine, about 30 milligrams of caffeine compared to 300 in a big, big, huge vent of Starbucks. So anyway, I don't know how I know the numbers. So what happens is, and even you have this, the stimulant, right? Now your body is in a fight or flight. Now your adrenaline, and now you're tense, and your kids ever irritate you? Like, why are these little things irritating me? Because you're ready, you're like this. So here comes, I have to have some more of that coffee in the morning before I get up. Now I'm like this all day. It's a stimulant, it's a drug. And so we're walking around like this all day. And then what happens by around lunchtime? Get home, okay. And we live irritated and stressed out all day long. But I sleep just fine. I know you crash. That's why you get up frequently every two and a half hours. You're not getting deep sleep. When you don't get deep sleep, that's what happens. You go into a different sleep pattern. You wake up a lot. And your body's constantly under the stress. Because that's what does it. Your muscles are tense. Any back pain and neck pain out there? Why? Research it. It tenses everything up. It's a central nervous stimulant. So we're walking around all day long, self-medicating. And we take more to get rid of the pain that it's causing. Did you know the definition of that is insanity? Doing the same thing, expecting results. And that's really why I wanna clarify this point. Because people, what I do is a hard calling. Being a pastor, number one, is a hard calling. But a person focused on health and fitness is a really hard calling too. You mix them both, we're like the fishbowl from hell. Right? I'm not cussing, I'm just saying. So what's in your shopping cart? What are you doing? Pastor Shane is here, hide the crackers, hide the cookies, hide the, all the time. All the time. And they'll have a coffee and they'll be, or avoid those energy drinks. I'm telling you, eight grams of sugar, eight teaspoons of sugar and caffeine. Folks, folks, those energy drinks are not good stuff. Money. And if you treat your body well, you don't need an energy drink. I have plenty of energy right now. I'm not tired. I just preach, be up here for three hours. You can do, I'm turning 53 years old. Never been on medication all of my life. I've never had to have surgery except when my arm hit 12. Now I'm not saying that. God can say, okay, hotshot, now you're gonna go in the hospital and be sick. I'm prepared for whatever he wants to do. I've been bought and sold for Christ. But we can take care of this gift that God has given us to be better stewards of that. So if you're constantly taking in stimulants, constantly taking, you're not gonna get the, because it produces stress. How are you gonna get rid of stress when you're taking in what produces stress? It makes no sense to me. So the key is to start weaning off. What I did is I stopped everything after 12 o'clock around seven years ago. And boy, oh boy, my wife will never forget that four days. Don't do cold turkey if you don't have to. I've never felt, when people say panic attacks, I'm like, what are you talking about? Oh my Lord. I mean, you just wanna get under a cover, a blanket and scream. And I would drive, I would yell, driving. Like Lord, what is going, I'm a pastor. What's going on? Ah, then the light, oh yeah, yeah. I know what's going on. I'm withdrawing from Christian Crack. So now when I share it with people, I just share it to help. I don't, if you have a car, I don't care. You don't have to hide anything, do whatever you want. I'm just trying to help you. And there's people, that's the church that doesn't have coffee. You can do whatever you want. You can do whatever you want. You see, here's what I found though. It's the people who are convicted and don't like me talking about that. We gotta shoot the messenger. Right, let's just be honest. But I do wonder sometimes, it breaks my heart when churches, people 60, 70, 80 pounds overweight, you're giving them coffee and a huge donut. You talk about a double whammy. Talk about causing damage. And so, you know, we have to use wisdom in these areas. But that's my heart for Westside. I don't care, if you do it, don't hide it. I tell people, if you have four ounces, six ounce, did you know the size of a coffee cup, what they used to be? The six ounce teacup, that was the size. They would never go over that. And then it turns into. I gotta show you sometime if I remember. It's called, it says Big Dog on it. And it's a mug, and it's about 32 ounces. And I used to tell my wife, I'm just having one cup of coffee today. But see how, and if you look at, here's where it can get really interesting. My mom said, told me 10 years ago, Shane, did you know in the mental, in the, what do they call that? The Diagnostic Manual for Mental Disorders, that it lists mental disorders over 500 milligrams of caffeine. You can cause mental disorders in your mind with over 500 milligrams. It's documented, it's in the Diagnostic Manual for Mental Disorders. Caffeine-induced sleep disorder, caffeine, this disorder, why? Because at 500 milligrams, it is a very, very powerful drug that is jacking you up. There's no better way to say it. People actually die on caffeine overdoses. And what I'm trying to do is just help people. And there's so many testimonies in this church of people have been, Shane, I don't struggle with anger anymore. I don't yell at my kids. I don't, shouldn't the Christian, shouldn't that be a goal of a Christian? Why do we think, why do we joke at this kind of stuff? Like, oh yeah, I love my, well, why are you a jerk to people? You have no fruit of the Spirit. There's no love, joy, peace, contentment, gentleness, kindness, long-suffering. There's none of that. So this Christian crack that you love is taking away the fruit of the Spirit. You tell me what is worse. And so again, as someone who has a little bit now and then, I'm not against that. I think it's okay if you want to. I think you'll feel a lot better if you don't. But be very careful in these areas because it adds to stress. And then obviously stress, I have to tell people where my really heart, my heart is in Jeremiah. God said, you will seek me. You will seek me and you will find me when you search for me with all of your heart. And I think that's what many, many people in the church need to do is they need to start seeking God with all of their heart and with all of their strength. And that's where true peace comes from. That's where true stress-free life comes from. There's stress, don't get me wrong, but you rest in Christ. You rest in that relationship with God. And that takes away the stress. Isaiah 26 three, I didn't put it up there, but I just added this. You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you. So don't stay caught in the endless cycle of killing yourself to live. Physically, spiritually, or mentally. It all begins with a choice to surrender to the one true and living God and experience the peace that surpasses all understanding. So praise God for that. So I hope you were encouraged by this because it's not that difficult. It's not that challenging. The first step, I'm sorry, what is that? The thousand mile journey, right? Begins with the first step in the right direction. Yes, you don't see the weight instantly drop off. You don't feel better instantly. As a matter of fact, can we be honest? You don't feel good for a week or a couple days because King's stomach is mad and the flesh is angry and upset. And that's something that we have to figure on overcoming just by focusing on one step at a time, self-discipline, and allowing God to really change your heart and make decisions that last. So with that said, I will take some questions. They're gonna actually text them to me. First question that came in, Kyla or Nicole, you can text me as well. What type of fasting do I recommend for those beginning? Well, those beginning, I recommend to start weaning off of the things that you're addicted to. That's why fasting is so hard. It wasn't that once I got off of coffee and sugar and processed food, it wasn't as hard as you think. The reason it's so hard is because we're withdrawing from these favorite things. We're favorite caffeine, our favorite sugar, and like, I'm just gonna, I hate fasting. No, you're a drug addict. Withdrawing from their favorite addiction, as was I. So I would recommend getting off of all those things unless God says, nope, time to fast. Get off all those things and then begin by missing some meals. Intermittent fasting is really popular. I didn't have time to talk about that. Miss breakfast, maybe miss lunch and try to just have a healthy dinner. And then you start to train your body in that direction. So I would start out with those things. I would talk to your physician, of course. For example, are you taking high blood pressure medication? If so, fasting's gonna lower your blood pressure. And now you got a big problem because your blood pressure is too low. So you have to talk to your physician as well. And what I found is, and what I did, and he ran a big blood work panel on me two years ago. I told him, here's what I'm doing. Don't ask your physician, should I fast? No, no, no, no, you're gonna die in 10 days if you don't eat. They thought that. That was the rule, 10 days and you're gonna die in the 1850s or so. But you tell them, here's what I'm going to do for health benefits, will you help me in this endeavor? Will you regulate my blood work and will you help me in this? That way you're letting them know you're not asking for feedback in this area. Because I don't know if anybody, unless you're a pregnant mom, nursing mom, anorexia, bulimia, you've already got not a lot of reserves. I mean, like your skin and bones and you're very deficient nutrient-wise, then I wouldn't recommend fasting. But for most people, fasting doesn't kill us, overconsumption does. That's where the real problem comes from. Looks like there's a lot of questions. I might be in trouble here. Okay, how old should kids be for fasting? Well, it's interesting. A lot of the books I read are from about 100 years ago. Dr. Tilden, Dr. Shelton. And they would actually fast kids that were sick, six years old, seven years old, when they were sick. They would get them off of all of the food. Because actually, you don't want chicken soup when you're sick. You don't want ice cream when you're sick. Because now your body's digesting this food, the chemicals, and it should be used, the energy should be used for healing the body. So if your child is sick, now my kid, yeah, please, I want ice cream. You know me, I'm caving in. But for the most part is you can, especially when they're sick, refrain from giving them a lot of food. If you do, make sure it's healthy and good. But how young should kids be? You know what, I'll probably, I really don't talk about this because not everyone is a fan of me or the church and they're looking for things to shoot at us. But the reason I really fasted, let me tell you, a year and a half ago, my daughter, 15 years old, did 40 days water only, not a touch of anything. And when I found out, she was two weeks into it, I'm like, okay, next Saturday you're done. My wife, I said, you're not doing that. She goes, but dad, I feel God wants me to do it. And she had reserves to do it. And I said, ah. And so I know what to look for, potassium, magnesium, sodium, heart palpitations, being sick, throwing up, vomiting. I know what to look for. And talk about, I mean, she went to the gym with Kyla. She was working, cleaning the house. I mean, I'm watching this 40 days miracle take place. She was turned 16 by then and she made it 40 days on water only, lost about 35 pounds, I think. And just amazing results. But I didn't force it. I was actually against it. We got into it, you're not, this is it. You need to stop next Saturday, that's enough. Like, well, you're the fasting guy. Well, yeah, but that's for other people. That's for other people. Because, you know, the gross spurt and the only bad thing that came out was a loss of hair, which was normal because your hair follicles and your body's regenerating certain things. But overall, I should tell you, it was incredible spiritually and physically. And she kept encouraging me to do it. And so I put it off for about a year and a half. She, I'm like, I'm not doing that, that's crazy. Even though I know it can be done, I write on it and I research, is that funny? I know it can be done. But I'm like, I have five kids, I'm busy, I can't, excuses, excuses, excuses. And then finally did it. So anyway, but how old should kids be? I think parents should take it to the Lord. You don't wanna risk not feeding them malnourished. But again, it depends on the situation. I think way too many kids have way too much sugar, way too much processed food. Even they want to eat, they want to eat. So I think we have to help teach them. You don't always have to eat all the time. And so fasting though is beneficial as long as you don't get carried away. How do you prepare for a week long fast if you are thin? But that's the thing. See, when I mentioned Dr. Herbert Shelton, Tilden, lots of, they used to fast for disease or the Buchheimer Clinic in Germany, 100 year history. They would make sure, now the person's gotta have, what does thin mean? I mean, people say, you got too thin, too thin, 200 pounds. I'm like, what are you talking about? Like 165, I'd be too thin. But see, what's our definition of thin? So really a person who shouldn't fast is, if you can see the rib cage, you can see I don't have a lot of reserves. I'm just, I'm kind of just, I'm sickly. Then that, you should know that's really not a time to be fasting. However, a lot of thin people have been known to fast, lose 12, 15 pounds and come back and gain healthy weight back because the body resets. So it depends on what the thin looks like and what, how you are doing. Are you strong in nutrients? Have you been taking in a lot of good vitamins and minerals? I should have been talking about supplementation. You know, I'm not a, I do take vitamins and minerals sometimes, but I kind of do it every other few days because cost-wise and you don't need a lot of things if you're getting it from the nutrients. But I think it's a good multivitamin is good, a good one with not a lot of fillers, binders, it's natural, B12, they're vitamin D, vitamin K. I think it's good to supplement those from time to time because we don't get it. And especially if you're diet, if you're a vegan, no meat ever, you know, you've got zinc issues, you've got B12 issues. And so you should be supplementing that a little bit. How do you keep muscle mass during fasting? Believe it or not, this is something I had to overcome in my own mind because you do lose a little bit of muscle, not much. What happens is your body goes into protein sparing mode. So it's sparing the protein and begins to burn the fat as the main source of energy. But there's not a perfect balance there. For example, if I exercise or I'm too active, I'm gonna lose some muscle because my body needs that gluconeogenesis. It converts that muscle to glucose for that quick fuel because ketone bodies aren't as quick and easily accessible for fuel. So I had to get that through my mind. Okay, God wants me to do this. You know, those days of six pack and are over looking like the rock, you know, my goal in my 20s and all that's wrong. It's wrong thinking. I think we should just not worry about our physical appearance as much but just more as a tool to help be productive and taking care of this gift that God has given us. So I had to overcome that. How do you keep muscle mass during fasting? You really don't wanna be very active. You wanna rest. Just rest, let the body, you know, fast and heal. But when you start being active, that's what one guy, I can't remember his name. He did water only for 28 days. He lost 44 pounds in 28 days. And he said he kept a busy schedule. He's very active. And your body says, oh, oh, I need some energy. I'm gonna pull from your muscle as fuel as well. Your muscle can be used as fuel. That's a big thing people didn't know. Thoughts on canned sparkling water. I have it from time to time. It's called Waterloo. It's organic, no aluminum and things in the can but who knows what else it gets in it. But it's not really healthy because what is sparkling water? What's injected into it? CO2, carbon dioxide, especially if you're fasting. Kind of upsets the stomach a little bit but is it better than a Diet Pepsi? Yeah, but the problem is I'll probably have four a day. Sparkling water, sparkling water, sparkling. So maybe if you can just minimize it, get down to maybe just one, enjoy one or two a day. I know we do, our family does. It just kind of takes the edge off. That or Dr. Pepper, it's a no brainer. But the best thing would be clean water with lemon. Maybe lemon or just clean water versus a sparkling water. But it's not a big deal. Thoughts on a vegan diet. I think I mentioned that quite a bit. So if you fast forward, maybe somebody online listening. If you fast forward to the beginning, I talked about it. My stance hasn't changed probably in the last 10 years is whole plant-based diet. For example, I can already plant it. Like later today if I go home, huge salad, different types of greens, different types of green salad, cucumbers, tomatoes, mushrooms, very colorful salad, maybe some seeds, some avocado, and maybe a little bit of meat, salmon or tuna or chicken. And that would be a very big, healthy lunch. I also made some rice, some black rice. And so it's a God-given healthy food. But we'll have a little bit of meat. I've tried to avoid dairy just because it's ultra-pasteurized and it's really not clean and it's sugar water when you're drinking a lot of milk. So vegan, yeah, vegan diet. But then did you know Oreo cookies are okay on a vegan diet? Really? So it's how you define these terms. Vegan sometimes has chips and cookies and some eggs. So that's why this big craze, whole foods, plant-based, is a big craze, not knowing that it's actually biblical. Think about it. Whole food, the whole food, plant-based, from the ground, life-giving food. That's how you were designed to eat. So if you can start adding that in, like sometimes I wanna eat breakfast, I'll wait till lunch and dinner and I'll have fruits and vegetables in each meal I have, unless it's like maybe an almond butter with some manuka honey on an apple or something. But okay, is fasting good for someone with no thyroid and no thyroid meds? Oh, so this person has no thyroid and they're on thyroid meds. Again, I would talk to your physician on that because the thyroid is so important in regulating certain things. And I would do research on your own. I would talk to your physician. But normally, fasting is very beneficial in all areas, even for regulating hormone levels. But again, with the medication now, that could throw a whole new, that could throw a monkey wrench into the problem. Let's see. Can healthy carbs help with sugar cravings? Yeah, I should probably talk about that. Healthy carbs. Did you know white rice, why it's not good? Did you know it's not made, it's not grown? You don't just have white rice grown. You've got to remove the, I think there's about three or four different things from it and what's left over is the white rice. That's why they call it high glycemic. You've heard of that high glycemic index. What that does is it sparks insulin. So what happens with all these high glycemic foods is I take a cup of rice, boom, big insulin spike. But what about if I had that rice whole and complete? The insulin spike is about half. Or apple juice, boom, insulin spike. Or an apple, very slow because the pectin and the fiber slow down the absorption rate. And so that's why, when you talk about healthy carbohydrates, I would think of healthy quinoa, brown rice, rolled oats that are fully oats and you have to cook them for 20 minutes and Ezekiel bread that is that full, that all the nutrients are there. And so that, again, is it God given or did man make it? If man made it, if it's a cookie cracker box of cereal, there's a good chance it's not gonna be the right kind of carbohydrate. And if you read on the back, it says enriched. Do you know why it says enriched? Stuff was removed, vitamins and minerals. So they have to put it back in. And the synthetic is never as good as the God given type of vitamins and minerals. They have to put it back in there. So on that question of, can healthy carbs help with sugar cravings? Yes, because what a sugar craving is, and I've lived this from during my fast, not giving up sometimes. You ever have sugar cravings where it's almost unbearable? And that's why you'll see an alcoholic sometimes they give up alcohol, they switch to caffeine or nicotine and that sugar craving. So what happens is usually the body signaling for something could be dopamine and what's at that high that drug, and so what a good carbohydrate is, like if I have an apple, my sugar cravings just are completely gone after the apple is eaten. Why? Because you satisfied, the body's needing something and you satisfied it with a whole God given food. And so you can use healthy carbohydrates to ward off sugar cravings. Why is soy in everything? Genetically, soy and corn are genetically modified now just about in all areas. And it's soybean, it's soybean oil, soybean, it's in everything because it's profit. And so I would avoid those. I mean, there's a lot to do with soy and estrogen. I know people who had a lot of soy, a lot of men who had a lot of soy, they would develop gynecomastia, where their nipple, their breasts would actually start to look like women's breasts because the estrogen would build up. That also happened in steroids too. Steroids would cause that in men. What do you say to those with food sensitivities and have reactions to lecithins and different things? It could even, gluten could fall under this. So what I would do, those who have food sensitivities, you've got to structure your diet around those sensitivities. And I've also did, when I was doing a lot of research, a lot of times fasting, maybe a five day water fast will reset a lot of these sensitivities and you can begin introducing foods again. What's good about fasting too is you reintroduce it. You can start to figure out, oh, this makes me feel this way. This makes me feel this way. I need to avoid these foods because now you're a lot more sensitive. I could not believe my first salad after the fast, I almost didn't need salad dressing. Isn't that amazing? I put a little bit of apple cider vinegar that had a little bit of cherry juice in it. It's real healthy. Just like a teaspoon on the whole salad. I'm like, why don't I need a half a cup of salad dressing? Because your palate has changed too. You start to desire God-given food the way you're designed. And if I take even a sip of Dr. Pepper or something, I haven't yet, but I probably spit it out. Or a donut because your body's back to the way it was originally designed. Does stevia spike insulin? I'm not sure you'd have to research that. A little bit, I know it's a no calorie sweetener, but with all things, it might send a response. Like, for example, aspartame. When you took that, your body thought it was sugar and so it responded accordingly. I just cut down my caffeine intake to only one cup of coffee in the morning. I now have a sore throat. Could be the caffeine decrease caused by the sore throat. I would say probably not. Maybe more of a coincidence, but I'm not an expert in caffeine consumption, but it could be, I mean, depends on how much caffeine, what time of day. But I would say that might just be coincidence. Is decaf coffee okay? Yes, I should say this too. There's the whole debate on alkalinic, alkaline, and so coffee's acidic. And so it's not necessarily that great of something to have first thing in the morning on an empty stomach, but I'm guilty as charged. But if you get decaf, make sure it's organic. Because your coffee, beans, and your tea leaves are sprayed directly with herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides, then they go right into the cup. You got over, I think it's over 200 chemicals now in a cup of coffee. Did you notice, I don't know if Starbucks already done it, but they were gonna have to put something up that roasted coffee can lead to cancer. It's a known carcinogen. I don't know if the state of California made them do that yet. And then also processed meat, luncheon meat with sodium nitrates is a known carcinogen. What a carcinogen is, is it means it's cancer-causing. And what it does, you take this in, and your cells in your body, a normal cell goes, what is this, this chemical, and the cell is damaged by it, the DNA is damaged by it, and then that produces another cell, and another cell, another cell. Now you've got these cancer cells growing, and these types of things can spark that. If you have any questions, again, you can put it back there. I think we have time for just a few more. I maintain weight with keto and intermittent fasting, but my cholesterol is high. Should I be on statins? Again, I would talk to your physician, but what is high cholesterol? I've been told I have high cholesterol a little bit, HDL. They take a HDL-LDL ratio, but I'm not real worried because cholesterol is good. Your body produces a lot of cholesterol. And again, it's not the cholesterol on the arteries that would be my main concern. It's what's causing the breakdown of the artery. Why is the cholesterol coming to the rescue? You're shooting the paramedic. You need to figure out what's causing the damage. But again, talk to your physician. I eat organic with no caffeine, but had my appendix out two years ago, and now I'm reactive to carbs and sugars, and always falling asleep, sleep apnea. Any advice? On this one, I would maybe even talk to a holistic doctor or do a little bit of research. Maybe you have to avoid carbs and sugars for a while, for sure, but again, I'm not an expert in these areas, so I don't wanna give you wrong information. What do you think about eating certain foods for your blood type? I remember that book. This type for your blood type. But the reason there's a little bit of truth in that, because do you know where sugarcane originated? Things like New Guinea, over there in Asia. They didn't have, we didn't have that. We had honey, or in the Middle East, you don't hear sugarcane in the Bible a lot. You hear honey. And so, bananas don't grow here. Apples, so could it be that, you know, I see it creation, we all ate the same thing, but maybe when people disperse, there's different types of things for different people groups. So I don't, I remember it was interesting, but I don't, if I want a banana, I'm gonna have a banana. You know, and so I don't think, but if you study your blood type and certain foods work better for you, then I think that's good. You know, do again what works best for you. So I think we're just about done on questions. Let's see, a very good way to teach them spiritual principles. Oh yeah, have the kids fast from sugar and junk food. If they cannot fast for a meal or day, even a six-year-old can understand we are going to deny something in our cravings and different things. But yeah, so it's a good way to teach our kids, because if we don't teach our kids, what are they gonna do leaving the house, thinking they need to eat every two hours and they need to answer King's stomach every time he calls. Boy, if you get older, that's gonna be a big problem because he calls a lot. Lord, I just give you this whole event. I pray that people are encouraged and strengthened. And Lord, I know you're gonna do a big thing in the lives of many people. Once they get this physical under control, their physical appetites, Lord, submit those to you. And I pray that people will be set free this morning of disease and addiction. Lord, show us the right way. In Jesus' name, amen.