A discussion with Denny Waxman, macrobiotic counselor, on anti-aging diet plan and anti-aging from the inside out. We dive into detail of how he started with macrobiotics, what to expect when building an anti-aging plan, and why a macrobiotic lifestyle is the best anti-aging diet plan.
To learn how to create your own anti-aging diet plan, schedule time with Denny now!
How did you get started in macrobiotics and how has it helped you with health & anti-aging?
I started by accident. I heard about macrobiotics from a friend and it called to my attention as I was currently 100% junk eater. I tried to get started, eating brown rice. However, it took several years to truly get started. It was not until I found a macrobiotic community did I start sticking to the lifestyle and really getting into it.
Mostly, I have enjoyed good health. I feel macrobiotics anti-aging plan helps keep people young in every way from physically, mentally, and in appearance. With healthy anti-aging diet plan, people feel faster, brighter, and skin looks better. Aging gracefully is natural for people. It is the modern lifestyle that people age quicker. So without any special treatments, healthy people have naturally healthy skin and bodies.
What have been your struggles with aging & how has macrobiotics helped overcome them?
I honestly like aging and always look forward to what is next. I don’t try to avoid it. I look at it as further growing my life. Adding new experiences is what aging is all about. Instead of running from time, a macrobiotic anti-aging plan is really about creating a lifestyle that will let you still spend quality time with those you love and will allow you to remain connected to the world we have built around ourselves. For me personally, I appreciate time with my grandchildren and staying active. This is what keeps me feeling most youthful.
When I look at my diet and lifestyles practices, there are other things that certainly contribute to me feeling young. But, after time these routines are second-nature and do not feel like a plan to avoid aging at all! This really does a good job of looking forward and keeps me from struggling with my age.
What should people expect on an anti-aging diet plan?
Anti-aging plan is creating ordinary lifestyle practice. The problem with modern life is we do not have a schedule in order to have regular sleeping patterns, meal times, and physical activity. Scheduling times for all of these helps relieve stress.
On the dietary part, I recommend anti-aging foods such as beans, fruits, brown rice, and sourdough bread. All of these foods have a longevity. Anti-aging foods when we eat them, the longevity will transfer to us.
Why should people choose a macrobiotic diet for anti-aging purposes?
Macrobiotics is a way of eating based on the world standing traditional cultures. All countries have a dietary pattern. In the beginning, everyone had the same diet with soups, seeds, and grains. It was the traditional way of eating. This means that macrobiotic anti aging plan is not a fad, but on the contrary is quite well tested.
These are lifestyle practices that haven’t changed for years. It was only after World War II that we had high animal food intake. Also, macrobiotics is not just a diet, but a lifestyle. It is healthy eating with creating a balanced environment around you, scheduling regular times to sleep and eat, while creating daily habits to relieve stress.
What are anti-aging foods you would recommend? What foods should be avoided?
Most important anti-aging foods are grains, beans, and vegetables. In particular, grains like brown rice, bulgur wheat, oatmeal, polenta, any type of bean, chickpeas, vegetables, cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower.
Basically avoid animal foods, processed foods, and dairy foods.
What would you recommend to reduce stress & fight aging?
I recommend walking outside half an hour or more each day. Also, washing your skin with a warm washcloth to activate it. Also, make your home environment natural. Your home should be a rebalancing and recovering area. You should feel re-energized when you come home. Feng shui and other aspects of becoming connected and aware of your surroundings is a fundamental aspect of macrobiotics – it is the ultimate mindfulness practice that, in turn, makes it the best anti-aging plan. If you surround yourself with a stressful, unnatural environment that doesn’t promote healthy life, how can you expect that your body would thrive?
What keeps people from following a macrobiotic lifestyle or anti-aging plan?
The hardest part of an anti-aging plan is getting started. Unfortunately, when we look around, most of us do not live in a world where we are used to living healthy. If you are eating a traditional diet, it may be hard to find healthy meals and foods at restaurants that follow your health goals. So, you may have to make food yourself and find the time to prepare it. This alone is a major factor that keeps the majority of people I talk to from living a long, healthy life.
You will also find it hard to stick with macrobiotics if you think of it solely as an anti-aging diet plan that requires taking away the foods that you enjoy. Instead you should look at it as adding and discovering new things through high-quality food.
Several years ago, we had a food counter with fruits, vegetables, and grains. People that would come regularly each day for lunch after just a week or two started looking better. If you approach it by adding then you will reach a health tipping point. It is all about building up, like having just one healthy meal a day. It’s not an all or nothing thing. Just trying to eating more vegetables and grains for at least one meal would significantly improve the quality of life many people currently have. And, with a higher quality of life, comes a stronger desire to live!
What is your favorite part of using macrobiotics as an anti-aging plan?
Seeing the change!
Recognizing people that are coming back and noticing they look better is by far the best feeling I can have. Many times, I will watch my clients identify problems they were not even aware of (like not sleeping well) and then be told how those issues are becoming better for them. Overall, seeing the change in people’s appearance after they have started an “anti-aging plan” is an amazing feeling for me. Whether you call it a macrobiotic diet, and anti-aging plan, or simply a quest for knowledge and connectedness with the universe around us, the result is the same: putting effort into living a healthy lifestyle will result in a more vibrant life!
Want to feel and look better?
- Schedule a macrobiotic consultation with Denny Waxman.
- Take one of our macrobiotic courses at SHI.
For more interesting articles about nutrition, macrobiotics, and living a healthy lifestyle, please visit Denny’s macrobiotic blog.
The standard macro diet IS an “anti-aging” plan…I should know…I’m 75 and learned the diet in 1980–even gary null–no friend of the macro diet—said in his book on brain health that COMPLEX CARBOHYDRATES were the gold standard for brain health…as one of the worlds most prominent MDs in her field explains:
*************************************************************************Sherry A. Rogers, M.D.
Macrobiotics: a major tool to heal the impossible
I had over 20 diagnoses for which there still to this day are no known causes and no known cures in medicine. So I figured the first place to start would be to see what folks had used who claimed they had cured their own cancers. When I read Elaine Nussbaum’s story, Recovery From Cancer, I then investigated her and many other people who had claimed the same. She is very well today 23 years after her metastatic cancer, against which medicine was totally powerless.
The next step was to see what macrobiotics could do for me. I was dependent upon eleven allergy injections a week for years for migraines, asthma, chronic sinusitis, brain fog, and eczema, triggered by many pollens, dust, molds, foods and chemicals. As well, I had colitis, arthritis, unwarranted depression, exhaustion, and a recent onset of a uselessly painful right shoulder which baffled orthopedic specialists.
I couldn’t even raise my arm to brush my hair or pick up a medical chart for six months. Within one month of the strict phase macrobiotic diet, as I described in detail in The Cure Is In the Kitchen, I was windsurfing in the Caribbean, because my shoulder was cured. As well, I’ve never had or needed another allergy injection. But what macrobiotics did for me is a drop in the bucket, compared with what I saw with hundreds of my patients. I saw people turn on and off like a switch such conditions as multiple sclerosis, severe chemical sensitivities, multiple myeloma and other cancers and conditions.
Sherry A Rogers, M.D., a Diplomate of the American Board of Family Practice, a Fellow of the American College of Allergy and Immunology and a Diplomate of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, has been in private practice for over 26 years. She is a lecturer of yearly original scientific material, as well as advanced courses for physicians. She was the keynote speaker for the international symposium Indoor Air Quality 86 in which she described the office method for testing chemical sensitivities. She developed the Formaldehyde Spot Test and published her mold research in three volumes of the ANNALS Of ALLERGY. She has published chemical testing methods in the National Institutes of Health journal, ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH PERSPECTIVES. She has published 17 scientific articles, 10 books, and was the environmental medicine editor for INTERNAL MEDICINE WORLD REPORT.
Medical researchers now have conclusively shown that 95% of all disease, including cancer has only two major causes: diet and environment. We’re the first generation of man to have ever eaten so many processed foods low in nutrients. As well we are the first generation to ever tank up on so many chemicals in our air, food, and water. As a result, the work of detoxifying this enormous, yet hidden load, causes the loss of even further nutrients. As well, government EPA studies show that 100% of U.S. humans harbor in their bodies PCBs, dioxins, volatile organic hydrocarbons, pesticides, heavy metals and other chemicals, most all of which are potent triggers to cancers. The load is so heavy now that when I was in medical school 35 years ago cancer was rare, the 10th cause of death. Now it is the number two disease to cause death in adults and number one for children ages 1-15. If that doesn’t give us a wake-up call that we have done something very nasty to the environment, then I guess nothing will.
As a result, we have found that as healing as the macrobiotic diet is, many people are too polluted and nutrient-depleted to heal with just the macrobiotic diet alone. As we described in Detoxify Or Die, we show folks how to determine their levels of vitamins, minerals, fatty acids and correct them. As well, how to determine their levels of toxicity and get the disease-promoting chemicals out of the body. The beauty is that the combination of the macrobiotic diet, nutritional correction and reversing the level of toxicity has enabled people to heal the impossible. And if they are just plain well, it’s the closest thing to the fountain of youth that we can attain, for it restores our levels of health back to where they were decades prior and in fact most are even better. Thank you for the opportunity to bring this information to folks. I’ve been practicing medicine for 33 years and also offer phone consultations to folks who want guidance through the maze of options. I know that many people are unnecessarily suffering. They haven’t a clue that they possess the major control over their health destiny.