I spent a month in Haiti when I was in my 20’s.
I’ve been to India and several other impoverished countries since this trip
ended…
But this little island nation takes the cake. We’re talking dirt poor.
That’s me on the left in Port Au Prince a few hours after we landed.
I had no clue what lie ahead when that pic was taken.
But I can assure you it was an eye opener for this middle class boy from the suburbs.
We spent our first night in Port Au Prince…
The next morning we woke up, bought 50 pounds of rice and hired a guy with a truck…
Then told him we needed a ride out to the back country.
He drove us to the middle of nowhere, dumped our stuff on the side of the road and split…
Now what?
After a long walk we finally found a shack sitting on a hillside…
Some poor guy was working this little sugar cane field on a slope as steep as a cliff.
And his wife was out there helping him and she was nude from the waist up.
I felt like I was in the middle of Africa in the 1800’s.
We told him we we’re looking for a place to sleep and he pointed down to a valley below…
And there sat 3 grass huts….
We’d found our hotel.
The guy who owned this little compound was about 60 years old.
He was weather beaten. Rough around the edges…
But he was stud. No doubt about it.
We gave him the 50 pounds of rice as payment and settled into our digs…
With mud floors, a colony of mosquitoes and no room service.
Later that night….
We came outside around dinner time to find a big fire raging in the middle of the huts.
Our host walked up to me and asked what I wanted to eat. And I made the mistake of saying meat.
Within seconds he’d grabbed a goat and hung it upside down by it’s back legs from a tree…
Then slit it’s throat with a rusty knife.
Bon appetite.
I’d never eaten goat before but it was actually pretty good.
I stuck with the muscle meat but they ate everything. Heart, liver, brains,
etc..
So they were getting some big time nutrition.
We woke up the the next morning….
And the old guy came up to me again and asked what I wanted for breakfast.
I looked at all the cute little goats running around and said…
How about a coconut?
I’d already killed one goat. And I wasn’t ready to kill another.
So once again our host got down to business…
And this 60 year old stud….
With no money. No personal trainer. No 24 hour fitness membership….
Pulled a strap out of his back pocket….
Wrapped it around a coconut tree and went straight up into the air more than
150 feet…
(photo credit vipnyc)
Then he pulled out his machete…..
Hacked down 6 coconuts and walked right back down like he was strolling
through the park.
I told you he was a stud.
And I’ll tell you exactly why he was….
Because that white rice we used as payment wasn’t a staple in his diet.
It was more like a desert. And he didn’t get it very often.
I probably ate 30 meals over the 10 days I was there.
And once you subtract the rice…
All that was left was goat, chicken, fish, coconut and mango.
These foods made up the vast majority of his diet.
And this explains why this man was still a stud at 60 years of
age….
He was eating real food. And he was still doing things like
climbing trees.
The fact that he didn’t own a television also helped.
Remember…
The holidays are right around the corner.
And if you’d like to hit the feast with a little breathing room…
Take a hint from our 60 year old stud before the celebration begins…
Kill your TV. Dump the refined grains. Eat real food….
Then tax your body in brief – hard spurts.
Do this and you’ll be ready for all the carbs coming your
way.
So instead of feeling fat and bloated once the food orgy
ends…
You’ll still feel like a stud.
