Choosing Discomfort to Achieve a Happy, Healthy Life
Welcome to the 5th edition of the Brodo Book Club! The author of The Comfort Crisis, Michael Easter, felt like the world’s biggest hypocrite. He wrote articles for a men’s wellness magazine, yet he found himself struggling through a hangover almost daily. He decided to trade the comforts of modern life – easy access to vices, an excess of food, a sedentary lifestyle, constant mild temperatures, and so on – to join a crew through the Alaskan wilderness with almost nothing but a hunting gun and the clothes on their backs.
Here are our takes:
DO HARD THINGS TO BECOME MORE COMFORTABLE WITH DISCOMFORT
When was the last time you had to worry about surviving? In our corner of the world, we live in a society where we take everything for granted. Most of us have enough food to eat, a roof over our heads, access to transportation, and a network of family and friends to help us out if anything goes too terribly wrong. Only a generation or two ago, people often didn’t even know when their next meal would come. While chronic starvation is detrimental to your health, fasting done the right way can actually benefit you. At Brodo we make our lives a little easier by fasting with bone broth in order to feel our best even while taking advantage of the benefits of fasting, but even trading a huge value meal for a mug of Brodo takes discipline.
Another normal aspect of our grandparents’ lives was grueling physical labor. Activities such as bailing hay, washing clothes by hand, milking cows, and so on were normal tasks. And that doesn’t even include jobs outside of the home! Today our workouts look a bit different, but it’s still important to push ourselves physically. Brodo is an excellent workout beverage – aiding in stronger bones and muscles – and in a faster recovery time.
ACCEPTING DISCOMFORT HELPS US APPRECIATE COMFORT
Standing in a 70 degree room doesn’t sound all that amazing – until you plunge into some ice water! When comfort is the norm, we forget to be grateful for what we have. But when you do hard things, suddenly your gratitude journal fills up quickly.
At Brodo, we work hard to make our broth – and the rewards make it worth it. Having the best tasting, most nutritious bone broth on the market is a reward in itself, but the other ones are less obvious. We are proud to be good stewards of the environment, work with sustainable farmers so they can make a good living, and make a positive impact on our Brodo family’s health. We are truly grateful to have our supportive community.
Gratitude can greatly benefit our mental health, which in turn boosts our physical health. When we feel good, we have the energy to make healthy meal choices – and that healthy food in turns helps our brains stay on track with our healthy choices.
THE TAKEAWAY
There are plenty of takeaways in this book, but the one that pertains to Brodo the most is our relationship to food. We believe that food should always be eaten (or sipped) slowly, enjoyed, and never be taken for granted. It should also benefit our health rather than cause harm to our bodies. While we try to make it easy (and delicious) to make the healthy choice by cooking up the best broth on the planet, we know it’s not easy to make the switch from a diet of hyper-processed foods to a more wholesome – but that effort pays off in profound ways.
Learn More
You can find The Comfort Crisis on Bookshop.org. You can also find our very own Brodo cookbook here, with bone broth musings and recipes from our head chef and founder Marco Canora.
