The Great Life Diet: A Practical Guide to Health, Happiness, and Personal Fulfillment

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The

Great

Life

Diet

A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO

Health, Happiness,

AND Personal Fulfillment

Denny Waxman

•

PREFACE BY MICHIO KUSHI

PEGASUS BOOKS

NEW YORK

THE GREAT LIFE DIET

PREFACE

BY MICHIO KUSHI

Humanity faces unparalleled opportunities and challenges as the new century unfolds. The world is unified more than ever through the Internet, cell phones, and other new technologies. At the same time, the threat of terrorism and nuclear blackmail, the outbreak of new viral diseases and epidemics, and the spread of cancer, heart disease, and other chronic ills are at an all-time high. Our children and grandchildren may inherit a globally warmed planet that is difficult to inhabit.

For the last half-century, macrobiotics has been in the forefront of the movement to promote personal and planetary health and peace. Derived from the traditional Greek words for great life, macrobiotics encourages people to take responsibility for their own health and happiness by harmonizing with nature and the cosmos. The most effective way to do this is to eat a balanced natural foods diet, centered on whole grains, vegetables, beans, sea vegetables and fruits in harmony with the seasons, the climate, and other environmental factors.

The value of this approach is now almost universally accepted. In its food guidelines for the American people, the U.S. government officially promotes whole grains as the foundation of a healthy diet. The newest version of the Food Guide Pyramid, released in 2005, calls for brown rice, millet, whole wheat, and other grains to be the center of every meal.

The benefits of a macrobiotic diet are becoming increasingly recognized. At Harvard Medical School, cardiovascular researchers report that people eating a macrobiotic diet for an average of two years have virtually no risk of coronary heart disease, the major cause of death in modern society. Scientists at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, and the National Tumor Institute in Milan, Italy, report that a macrobiotic diet may help prevent or control cancer. Researchers at the New England Medical Center in Boston report that macrobiotic women process estrogen better than others and this may explain their low incidence of breast cancer. The National Cancer Institute wishes to start clinical trials on the macrobiotic approach to cancer after reviewing several of 76 medically-documented recoveries compiled by researchers for the National Institutes of Health.

Other medical studies have shown that a macrobiotic way of eating is beneficial for improving childhood nutrition, reducing violent and aggressive behavior among young juvenile offenders, controlling T-cells in young adults with AIDS, improving geriatric and psychiatric health, and reducing multiple chemical sensitivities.

According to environmentalists, a macrobiotic-oriented diet will benefit the earth as well as the people it sustains. Organically growing grains and vegetables as our staple crops instead of animal foods reduces our dependence on fossil fuels, chemicals, and other toxins, enriches the fertility of the soil, and results in cleaner air and water.

Over the years, Denny Waxman has been one of my closest students and associates and has served in the forefront of this health revolution. He founded Essene, the pioneer natural foods store in Philadelphia, in the late 1960s and organized seminars on diet and health in the 1970s. In the early 1980s, he helped Anthony J. Satillaro, M.D., the president of Methodist Hospital in Philadelphia, recover from terminal cancer. The story was featured in the Saturday Evening Post, Life Magazine, and later in a best selling book Recalled by Life and has helped to popularize macrobiotics around the world. At the Strengthening Health Institute that he founded in the 1990s, Denny has developed a simple, practical approach to macrobiotic education that focuses on seven steps to better health.

In The Great Life Diet, Denny distills the essence of macrobiotic principles and teachings. He presents his seven steps in a clear, concise way that can be readily understood and practiced. Seasoned with insights and humor from his personal experience, counseling practice, and global travels, the book offers a compass to maintaining health, happiness, and freedom. A wealth of practical information, including lists of recommended foods, basic recipes, and meal suggestions, helps the reader get started.

Thanks to Denny and a remarkable generation of macrobiotic teachers, counselors, and natural foods cooks, the seeds of a healthy, peaceful world community have been planted. The Great Life Diet is a passport to a healthier, more harmonious life.

MICHIO KUSHI

Brookline, Massachusetts

Michio Kushi is the leader of the international macrobiotic community. The Smithsonian Institution recognized his pioneering contribution to the modern organic, natural foods movement; complementary and alternative medicine; and peace education by establishing a permanent Kushi Family Collection on Macrobiotics at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book represents a major portion of my life. I would like to thank and acknowledge all the people who have helped me and are, therefore, a part of it.

Without my parents, Anna and Herman Waxman, I would not be able to offer this book. It is with the deepest respect and appreciation that I acknowledge them.

To Michio and Aveline Kushi, my spiritual parents, who have spent their lives teaching macrobiotics and spreading it throughout the world. They have given me endless inspiration, encouragement and personal guidance.

To my teachers, George and Lima Ohsawa, Herman and Cornelia Aihara, Shizuko Yamamoto, and William Dufty, who have dedicated their lives to macrobiotics and given us this powerful legacy.

To Takashi Yoshikawa, who has helped me so greatly to broaden and deepen my understanding of ki, which I have used to strengthen the health and lives of all those I have been privileged to help.

To my brother, Howard, who has shared the dream of macrobiotics and Essene with me.

To my children, Nathan, Joe, Naomi, Alisa, Madeline, Amy, Zoe, Andrew, Natasha, and Sam, who brighten my life.

To my friends and associates, Bill Tara, Murray Snyder, Bill Spear, Judith Flohr, Melanie Waxman, Michel Matsuda, Patrick Riley, Michel Abehsera, Michael Kessler, Gary Flaxenburg, and Gabor Szalontay, Rod and Peggy House, and Simon and Dragana Brown, with whom I have shared many macrobiotic adventures.

To my dear friends, Doug FitzSimons, Don and Mary Marti, Mona Schwartz and Helen Stevenson, who have played a very significant role in my life.

To Ruth Ann and Jeffrey Dubb, who opened their home to me and helped me on my return from Portugal.

To my dear friends and close associates at the SHI, Leslie Frodema, Warren Kramer, Michelle Nemer, Joe Waxman, Lear Blitzstein and Jeremy and Susan Higa, without whom my dream of building a school could not have been realized.

To Tara Gartner, for this beautifully designed book.

To Ellen Brodkey, my close and endearing friend, who has worked long and hard to make this book possible.

To my many other friends, too numerous to name, but you know who you are and I thank you.

And, finally, to my wife, Susan, who shares my life and my dreams.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Introduction

The Seven Steps

Step 1: Take Time For Your Meals Everyday

Step 2: Set Your Daily Schedule

Step 3: Eat Two Or Three Balanced Meals Everyday

Step 4: Make Your Daily Life Active

Step 5: Create A More Natural Environment

Step 6: Make Your Macrobiotic Practice Work

Step 7: Cultivate The Spirit Of Health

Food Lists

Food Glossary

Recipes

FOREWORD

"Take care of your body with steadfast fidelity.

The soul must see things through these eyes alone,

and if they are dim, the whole world is clouded."

—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

This book represents more than three decades of my life. Since I first tasted brown rice in 1967, I have been committed to understanding the principles of macrobiotics through study, practice, counseling and teaching. I have used the profound wisdom contained in these principles to transform my own life, to help raise healthy children, to guide thousands of clients back to health and to improve the health of countless others who have attended my seminars over the years. My goal has been, and continues to be, to find new ways to simplify and clarify these fundamental principles so they can be understood easily and practiced accurately by anyone interested in this way of life. Good health is our birthright and our heritage and ought to be available to everyone.

People want better health but they don’t know how to achieve it. There is simply too much information available and it changes at too rapid a pace to be reliable. What’s worse, this information, on which many people base their health practices, often turns out to be conflicting.

We can all make better choices every day, under any circumstances, if we understand what constitutes a good choice. The Strengthening Health Approach to Macrobiotics, which stresses an orderly approach to eating and living, is based on creating good eating habits, healthy food choices, and a way of life that nourishes the spirit. This book came into existence because of the frustration I felt at seeing people make often heroic efforts to improve their health yet not achieve the hoped for results. I have tested and observed the value of the Strengthening Health principles over many years and I am no longer amazed when I see a person change dramatically after just a month or two of following these principles. I hope you will make these principles a part of your life in the spirit of joy and adventure. Allow common sense to guide you. Observe the benefits that come from your practice. Should you find you are not getting the desired results, adjust what you are doing. Talk to those who have more experience and who can guide you. Try to proceed in the spirit of the early explorers who left the old ways behind in their search for greater freedom and richer lives. If you can do this, you will discover a quality of health that is life changing. Please use it well and share it with others.

INTRODUCTION

February 10, 1969 was the turning point of my life. It was the first day of my macrobiotic practice. A lot has happened since that day; a lot had happened before that day. I’d like to tell you about some of it.

I didn’t embark on this way of life because of illness or because I saw it as a way of increasing my energy but because I was dissatisfied with my life. I had always had more than enough energy, perhaps too much, and my head was filled with ideas. My problem was figuring out what to do with all that vitality and all those ideas—in other words, what to do with my life.

I was graduated from high school in 1967, at the age of seventeen. Rather than work at a job I knew I wouldn’t enjoy I decided to try college. Six months into the first semester I found my classes so boring and so meaningless that I dropped out to study on my own. That plan didn’t work out either. The books I read depressed me even more. Many of them spoke of the glorious life and greatly enhanced abilities you could achieve through the development of your consciousness. Though their approaches differed, on one point the authors were all in agreement. In order to move in this direction, a teacher was required. But none of these books told me where to find one.

It was during this somewhat dark and restless period of my life that I first heard the word macrobiotics. A friend’s older brother used it in the process of describing a way of getting high by eating just brown rice. Of course, that is hardly what macrobiotics is all about but it caught my attention because of my own disastrous diet. I was a junk food addict. I ate meat only if it was between two slices of bread and I hated vegetables. I lived on sandwiches, pizza, cookies, candy, cake and soft drinks. Breakfast was my most substantial meal of the day and it consisted of a toasted bagel with butter and a coke. I will say, in my defense, that around this time I did notice that I was eating more and more junk food and feeling less and less satisfied—so the thought of eating brown rice and feeling better was quite appealing. Eager as I was to learn more about macrobiotics, no one I asked could tell me anything. My own stubbornness made me persist in the search and, eventually, a book appeared that would change my life.

The Unifying Principle

I came home one day to a house I shared with a group of friends in Philadelphia, to find a copy of You Are All Sanpuku, by George Ohsawa, the ‘father’ of macrobiotics, on my bed. To this day, I have no idea how it got there. The book, which has an extensive introduction by William Dufty, one of Ohsawa’s star students, transported me. It was the first book I’d ever read from beginning to end in one sitting and everything I had been searching for was in it. Ohsawa believed that we have the capacity to change our lives—that it is out of our daily diet and life style, things over which we have some measure of control, that we create our lives, for better or worse.

Ohsawa’s book introduced me to the ancient eastern concept of Yin Yang, the principle of balance, harmony and change. He called it the unique or unifying principle because it explained both the unity and diversity of all things. In the eastern way of thinking, all of life has this dual nature.

I was more than ready to try something new. I went out the next day and bought brown rice, sea salt, mu tea (a kind of eastern herbal drink) and rushed home to cook my first meal. The taste was interesting—not good, not bad—but I felt wonderful and inspired. And so it was that I began my first 10-day rice fast as described by Ohsawa in his book. I didn’t know it at the time but this was also the beginning of a new and wonderful life. Nor did I know I was having my first lesson in the unifying principle. And I most certainly didn’t know that trouble was on the way.

The third day of my new regimen found me in the supermarket buying a half-gallon of ice cream, a box of graham crackers and a quart of orange juice. By the time I reached the checkout counter, I’d eaten most everything in the cart. To say that I was disappointed and confused is to understate the case. I knew in my heart that this philosophy and way of life were what I had been looking for—but, obviously, the diet was impossible. I had to find someone who knew more about macrobiotics.

As luck would have it, one day while I was having lunch in a health food store, a guy with a very intense look about him walked in. For some reason, I thought he might be macrobiotic and I was right. He told me he had come to Philadelphia to change the consciousness level