Interview with Natural Bias

Today I have special treat: an interview with my friend Vin Miller of Natural Bias

I came in contact with Vin through Online Profits a course we are both taking. I immediately resonated with his holistic view on health. Like many, Vin once struggled to live a healthy life, instead succumbing  to the unhealthy habits of the Western World, but now lives a healthy life full of energy. I hope you enjoy the interview.

Me: NaturalBias is a blog that challenges it’s reader to live life as healthily as possible often suggesting concepts that go against main-stream beliefs. What inspired you to create NaturalBias?

Vin Miller: Most of my inspiration comes from the low standard of health that has unfortunately come to be accepted as normal. So many people are run down from overwhelming stress and poor nutrition that excellent health and normal health have come to mean two completely different things. As such, most people are living with a severely compromised quality of life and don’t even realize it.

I consider myself blessed to have experienced health issues at a relatively young age because it gave me the motivation necessary to look beyond the limits of mainstream health knowledge and gain a true understanding of optimal health. It didn’t take me long to find the world of holistic and natural health, and when I did, the concept of trusting nature and supporting your body’s innate ability to heal itself made complete sense to me. In fact, it seemed so obvious, simple and intelligent that it made me wonder how modern society has deviated so far from this common sense approach.

As I continued to research and learn, it became painfully obvious that many of the unhealthy influences and much of the misinformation that exists today are tied to corporate greed, and in some cases, even political corruption. Deeply frustrated by this blatant disregard for human life, I knew immediately that I had to do something to help people find sensible and truthful information about how to improve their lives through better health.

Me: Despite being fairly new your blog has shown a lot of promise and has seen a steady increase in traffic. What do you attribute your quick success to?

Vin Miller: Some of the factors that I believe have helped me get off to a good start include a strong passion for what I write about, a passion for writing itself, a technical background to help get the most of these passions, and a lot of hard work.

Because I enjoy writing and developing websites, blogging is an excellent medium for me to share my passion for natural health and help others improve their lives. While my technical background made it much easier for me to build a professional looking website and learn how to promote it, the passion that has driven me to learn as much as I can about natural health is definitely the most important factor. Without this passion, I wouldn’t be able to provide helpful information to my readers, and there wouldn’t be any incentive for them to visit my blog no matter how professional it looks or how well I promote it.

Despite my initial success, I know I still have a long way to go and look forward to the progress that lies ahead.

Me: Where do you see Natural Bias in 5 years time?

Vin Miller: To be honest, I don’t see Natural Bias being much different than it is now with the exception of having much more information to share and hopefully a much larger audience. I’m not looking to create an empire or make myself famous. I just want to continue learning and continue helping people by writing about it. That’s exactly what I’m already doing!

Me: What advice would you give to someone who wishes to transform their eating and exercising habits?

Vin Miller: Anyone looking to change their lifestyle should first be sure that they’re doing it for the right reasons. Too many people exercise and change their diets just to improve their appearance, and in my opinion, this is the wrong reason. To lose weight, most people will compromise their health by exercising excessively and starving themselves. While this may help them lose weight, it will eventually cause them to age faster and will increase their risk of developing disease. With this in mind, my advice to anyone wanting to lose weight is to put their health first by living a healthier lifestyle and allowing their excess body weight to come off naturally.

Consistently making healthy choices can require a lot of determination, particularly with the many unhealthy influences of modern society. Unfortunately, you have to go out of your way to find high quality food, avoid stress, get enough sleep, etc. If you don’t have a good understanding of the benefits of better health and don’t have a strong desire to achieve it, you simply won’t go through the trouble. Based on this, one of the most important pieces of advice I can offer someone looking to change their habits is to make sure they’re clear on why they want to do it.

Once someone is motivated to make some changes, two of the easiest things that can be done to improve their health and increase their energy is to get at least 8 hours of sleep each night and gradually eliminate sugars and refined carbohydrates from their diets. As simple as this may sound, many people are fighting fatigue each day as a result of their neglect for these two factors. To make matters worse, they usually compensate by consuming excessive amounts of sugar and caffeine.

Me: What are some of the healthiest food’s this world has to offer?

Vin Miller: In general, natural and organic whole foods that come from a tree, plant, or animal are the healthiest choices. Ideally, these foods should be eaten in a condition that resembles their original form as closely as possible and this means little or no processing and minimal cooking.

I’m hesitant to recommend particular foods because I’m a big believer in the idea that we each have unique nutritional needs. This belief is referred to as Metabolic Typing and explains why some people thrive on a high protein and fat diet while others thrive on a nearly vegetarian diet. Likewise, there are also many people who do awful on each of these diets. As such, natural and whole foods that are appropriate for the individual consuming them are the healthiest foods this world has to offer.

Depending on one’s Metabolic Type, some of the foods I consider to be most healthy include grass fed and free range meat, free range eggs, butter or ghee, most vegetables, fruits, raw nuts and oils such as coconut oil and olive oil.

Me: What are some of your favorite exercises?

Vin Miller: All of my favorite exercises are functional in nature which means that they resemble and support the basic human movement patterns that are an important part of all the physical activities we engage in from walking up and down stairs to high end athletic performance. The human body is designed to lunge, squat, bend, push, pull and twist, and for nearly anything we do, we’re required to move in a way that requires a combination of these patterns. Although we gain the ability to perform all of these movements at an early age, many adults lose their ability to perform them due to inactivity or improper exercise. As a result, they become more susceptible to pain and injury.

I tend to prefer exercises that train movement patterns as a whole and incorporate multiple joints. I also prefer free weights over machines because they allow for more freedom of movement and add an element of balance that helps to strengthen the small muscles that stabilize joints.

Although most people might not recognize all of them, some of my favorite exercises include trap bar deadlifts, front squats, single leg squats and weighted chin-ups. For people who are less experienced with resistance training, some of the exercises I like include lunges, single leg deadlifts and just about any rowing motion. In general, I like these exercises because they strengthen muscles that most people have neglected and improve function, posture, and resistance to injury.

In regard to cardiovascular exercise, I think intervals of short but intense bursts of activity are far superior to the long, slow and steady type of training that most people follow. Not only is this slow and steady style of training more of a burden on your body, but it also consumes much more time, and depending on your fitness goals, is also usually less effective.

Me: You said you once struggled with living a healthy life. When was your “A-Ha” moment?

Vin Miller: I first realized something was very wrong with the mainstream perception of normal health when I discovered that I was prone to hypoglycemia. This is a condition that results in dramatic drops in blood sugar after consuming sugar or excessive amounts of carbohydrates. As I would later learn, hypoglycemia is not necessarily a disorder in itself, but more a symptom of compromised health in general.

When I started researching about hypoglycemia, what I found was a long list of symptoms and problems that I was experiencing myself. This was the very first time that I realized that for quite some time, I’d been living with a severely compromised quality of life. Not only was I astonished that I’d gone so long without realizing it, but I was also extremely excited about the potential for improvement.

Although I had much more work ahead of me than I initially realized and was later diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, learning about hypoglycemia is what pushed me beyond the mainstream standards of a healthy lifestyle and inspired me to learn what good health is really about. Like many people who are misguided by mainstream misinformation, I thought I was already living a healthy lifestyle up until this point.

Me: Much of the Western World places great emphasis on treating the symptoms of disease rather than attempting to find the underlying cause. What is your take on this?

Vin Miller: I think the focus on treating symptoms is an unfortunate byproduct of the convenience driven and instant gratification mentality that modern society has cultivated in many of us. Many people disregard the need to live a healthy lifestyle because they assume that all their problems can be taken care of with a pill. The problem is that these people don’t fully understand the much better quality of life that they’re giving up and they accept the problems they’re bound to encounter as a normal part of aging. In reality, it’s often the decades of unhealthy habits that cause their problems, and relying on a pill to alleviate the symptoms is like pulling the fuse on a car’s check engine light instead of having it repaired. It’s only a matter of time before the problem grows and becomes more dangerous, possibly leading to major disease.

Having the desire to look beyond the symptom based approach of western medicine is often a matter of recognizing health as the foundation of happiness. Those who open their minds to this mentality are often amazed by how much they improve their lives as a result. However, regardless of what you tell them, some people will never accept this perspective. They’d rather live a life of indulgence and take the chance of living with pain and suffering during their later years. While I think this is a shame, life is about choices, and I respect their right to live this way.

Me: Thank you very much for your time.

Vin Miller: My pleasure! Thank you for inviting me to share my story with your readers.

If you would like to more learn more about Vin Miller please head over to Natural Bias

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