The PAUSE

Live Long! Live Well!

“Doc, I love your first rule about eating God-made food so that we can live a long and well life. It just makes sense. I can't wait to hear your second rule. Please, tell me what it is?

EAT LIKE CAROL

You remember Tom, the solitary forager who cooked his omelette straight from the land? Good. Now meet Carol.

On the 44th floor of a Manhattan high-rise, a Michelin-starred chef wakes on her day off, looks over the skyline, and thanks God.

She’s hungry.

From her immaculate kitchen, she pulls out pasture-raised eggs, grass-fed butter, and a mix of morels and chanterelles. Her eggs and butter were delivered by GreenChef the day before, the mushrooms chosen by her own hand at the Union Square Greenmarket, where she shops for her restaurant.

She starts with the mushrooms. From the hanging rack, she takes down her HexClad sauté pan and warms it over low heat. She melts a pat of grass-fed butter, and it fills the room with its nutty aroma. She tosses in the chopped mushrooms, and they sizzle softly. She sautés them until golden, making sure their moisture has fully evaporated. This way, their flavor is concentrated, and she is assured that there will be no watery omelette this morning.

Next come the eggs. She blends them until impossibly smooth, seasons with a pinch of Pink Himalayan salt and freshly cracked Filius Blue pepper, then adds a whisper of​ ​ras el hanout​​, a North African blend whose name means “top of the shop,” created from a merchant’s finest spices. A spoonful of​ ​crème fraîche​​ goes in last, adding luxurious tang and creaminess.

She reaches for her favorite nonstick Caraway omelet pan and swipes a stick of butter across the surface. The egg mixture flows in. The edges set gently while she tilts, rotates, and stirs, coaxing soft, delicate curds into existence.

When the eggs are nearly set but still tender and custardy, she lays the mushrooms on one-half of her egg pancake and folds the omelette with practiced grace. A brush of clarified butter gives the top a glossy sheen and catches the fresh herbs she sprinkles. A final pinch of flaky sea salt seals the deal.

She carries the plate to the table, sits, and lets the city sprawl out before her.

During her first bite, she listens as she chews, feels the textures of her perfectly cooked omelet, and notes its colors. She savors and notices all the different flavors, then takes a deep inhale of its aroma. She nods and smiles.

Want to learn the second most powerful tool we have to live long and live well?

Here it is…​
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EAT GOURMET FOOD

Gourmet isn’t about white tablecloths, whisper-only dining rooms, or portions so small you need a magnifying glass.

It’s the decision to treat nourishment as sacred. It’s elevating eating from a basic biological reflex into a daily ritual of joy, beauty, and meaning.

One of the biggest fears I hear from the women and men I coach when it comes to optimizing their weight is this:

Diets do not work, and the main reason is that they're menus are boring and bland.

When foods are boring and bland, you'll be depriving yourself of pleasure, and life isn't about living in a black and white world. It's about colors and flamboyancy.

Deprivation will destroy a diet faster than someone placing a bowl of crème brûlée in front of you. If your meals taste like punishment, your brain will revolt long before your waistline does.

That’s why I don’t believe in diets. I believe in eating with principles. The Meso-Menu is a purpose-driven lifestyle designed to help you fulfill your life’s work while living long and well.

The Meso-Menu transforms God-made foods into gourmet meals that flip your biology from fat-storing to fat-burning, preserving muscle, keeping your metabolism strong, and fully engaging your taste buds.

The Meso-Menu isn’t a diet. It’s learning how to eat the right foods, with pleasure, for life.

WHY?
GOURMET MAKES YOUR HORMONES SING

In a world hypnotized by speed, gourmet cooking slows you to a pace your biology recognizes. It teaches patience through simmering, timing through searing, humility through the occasional flop, and gratitude through small, earned successes.

Food becomes a pleasurable moment, not a drive-thru blur inhaled between errands.

Cooking and eating are two of life’s great joys, and joy, quite literally, tunes your hormones. There is no supplement or secret hack that balances your system faster than genuine pleasure and presence.

When you cook gourmet meals, you stop being a passive consumer and become a creator. You engage your hands, eyes, nose, intuition, your entire sensory orchestra. Your nervous system responds immediately. Stress hormones settle. Dopamine rises in a clean, earned way.

This isn’t indulgence. It’s biological alignment.

Your body wasn’t designed merely to eat food. It was designed to prepare it and consume it with intention, creativity, and reverence. And when you do, your hormones don’t just cooperate, they sing. Haven't you noticed that when you’re singing, the world and your hormones are just right?

WHY?

GOURMET MAKES YOU LOSE WEIGHT QUICKLY

Trying to lose weight on boring, bland food is a losing battle. It’s not sustainable, it’s not enjoyable, and it certainly won’t help you reach your ideal weight. Misery doesn’t melt fat; it just makes you fantasize about escape routes.

Think of the most monotonous job imaginable.

If all you did, eight hours a day, five days a week, year after year, was load staples into a stapler, how long would you stay? Not long, because boredom crushes motivation.

The same happens with food. A bland, colorless menu doesn’t build discipline; it breaks it. Boredom pushes people toward human-made, ultra-processed “shortcut” foods. That’s when emotional eating sneaks in. That’s when mindless grazing starts. That’s when the pantry becomes a danger zone.

These human-made foods train your metabolism in all the wrong ways. They slow it down, dull your palate, and condition you to crave refined sugars, artificial fats, and enough salt to season a small ocean.

But gourmet, God-made foods do the opposite.

They wake your senses. They spark curiosity. They draw you back into the experience of eating, tasting, noticing, savoring, and appreciating.

And when you participate and appreciate, everything changes.

Your palate resets. Your metabolism responds. Your discipline strengthens because it’s supported, not strangled.

WHY?

GOURMET FOOD BUILDS HEALTH

Health is built from the ingredients found in God-made food, the stuff nature crafted, not factories. And let’s be honest: no gourmet chef on earth is reaching for Ritz crackers to “elevate” a casserole or pouring in seed oils that have been chemically processed more times than a tax return.

Gourmet cooking relies on whole, real ingredients, and within those ingredients are the raw materials of optimal health.

How does that make you healthier?

Let’s break it down within the three main protocols from the Purification Strand of The HOPE Protocol, yeah, that’s what I call the system I use to optimize hormones, weight, health, and mind.

Liver Health

God-made foods come toxin-free. Your liver doesn’t have to punch a time clock and work overtime to clean toxins out of God-made foods; instead, it can perform its 500 functions well, and the three we are primarily concerned about: burning fats, converting hormones, and activating them efficiently.

And what do Human-made ultra-processed formulated foods do?

They are a chemical carnival. Your liver has to filter it all, and while it’s drowning in cleanup duty, it can’t focus on metabolic work.

Imagine eating one of Tom’s fresh, God-made eggs versus some artificial “egg product.” Do you think your liver even recognizes that impostor

Exactly.

Gut Health

Your health rises and falls with your gut. Ultra-processed formulated foods feed the parasitic bacteria that harm you. God-made, whole foods feed the symbiotic bacteria that protect you.

It’s simple:

• Feed the gut well → the gut feeds you well.
• Feed it garbage → it returns the favor.

Muscle Maintenance

Real animal protein, paired with movement, keeps muscle on your body.

Frailty is the third leading cause of death for women after seventy because muscle atrophy (sarcopenia) steals strength, balance, confidence, and independence.

After age fifty, most of your calories should come from high-quality animal proteins.

And when you “gourmet” those proteins by seasoning them and searing them, you’ll elevate them; you’ll actually look forward to eating in a way that supports strength and longevity.

The Bottom Line of Health

Gourmet meals use God-made foods that protect your liver, heal your gut, and preserve your muscle: the three pillars of optimal health.

WHY?

GOURMET MAKES YOUR MIND COME ALIVE

When it comes to mind optimization, nothing outperforms joy.

• Joy harmonizes hormones.
• Joy is metabolically active.

Joy nudges you toward healthier choices because genuinely happy people don’t need a drink, a smoke, or a coping cracker or chip. And honestly, what is mental health if not the ability to experience joy deeply and often?

Joy comes from doing what you love in the moment. And I’ve yet to meet someone who doesn’t light up at a beautifully plated meal, especially when the flavor knocks them backward in the best way.

Instead of drowning your taste buds in added sugar, you begin teaching them to detect the natural sweetness of caramelized onions, ripe berries, slow-roasted squash, and grass-fed butter melting luxuriously into eggs. Instead of chemical flavors screaming for attention, authentic flavor sings.

And here’s the miracle:

Because joyless eating always devolves into self-sabotage. You can only white-knuckle discipline for so long before your soul gets bored and wanders off. Gourmet is where discipline and desire sit down, shake hands, and decide to work together.

There is also something quietly rebellious about choosing gourmet. You’re refusing the industrial food system that profits from keeping you tired, inflamed, addicted, and distracted. You’re choosing craftsmanship over convenience, vitality over velocity, depth over distraction, three choices that lengthen life every single time.

FINAL THOUGHT

Eating food without it being gourmet is little more than extended endurance. Gourmet eating, by contrast, increases lifespan through hormonal harmony, effortless weight management, elevated health, and the joy that keeps mental health optimized.

Living a long life infused with beauty, flavor, anticipation, and shared meals, that is a life well lived.

They teach you that excellence is not an event, it is a habit practiced two to three times a day.

Cooking and eating gourmet food is essential. Because you do not live well by eating to survive.

If you want to learn more about optimizing your hormones, weight, health and mind, Click Here and schedule a convenient time to have a free consultation with me. The consult will take about 40 minutes to explain what you'll need to be, do, and have to optimize your body and mind. Don't hesitate, because living a long and well life starts today with the food you eat. In this consult there are no sales, just a protocol designed exclusively for you.

And if you know someone that will benefit from this newsletter invite them to subscribe to it by forwarding this one to them. And if you read this newsletter online, you can subscribe by CLICKING HERE.​

Are you ready for the third rule to live long and well? I think it may just be the tool for you. If you are, I’ll meet you here next week.

WHERE DO YOU START LEARNING TO COOK GOURMET?

Just like we improve health by testing God-made foods, more on that in a future newsletter, you learn gourmet cooking the same way: by testing one small, intentional upgrade every time you cook.

When I ask gourmet chefs where to begin, most give the same surprising answer: Start with salt.

Salt is the foundation of flavor. Different salts change a dish in different ways, some sharpen, some soften, some brighten, some deepen. And all it takes is a pinch. (And yes, a pinch is great for your hormones, your weight, your health, and your mind. We’ll get into that soon.)

In our home, we keep a little salt collection. Each morning, when you make your first meal of the day, try a different salt. One pinch. One experiment. One small daily gourmet moment.

Because becoming a gourmet cook isn’t about mastering soufflés or plating like a Michelin chef.

• It’s about exploring.
• It’s about curiosity.
• It’s about learning the building blocks of real flavor.

And it all starts with something beautifully simple: a pinch of salt and a willingness to taste. Below is an Amazon link for a great sampler you can purchase to get started.

​GOURMET SALTS​

US-IE

Vicky and I are retired and our passion besides teaching others how to optimize their hormones and weight, is to live every day to its fullest. Here is this newsletter's Us-ie.

Some moments just stop you in your tracks. This moment sure did. This us-ie was taken at Jardines de Pedro Luis Alonso in Málaga—where the roses are dramatic, the fountains whisper old-world charm, and even a simple us-ie feels like a scene from a European love story.

Sun on our faces, history in the air, and one of those “don’t forget this moment” kind of afternoons. Spain, did a fantastic job of stealing our hearts.

🇪🇸 The Macs

Hormone and Weight Optimization Author and Coaches

​HOPE isn’t just a feeling. It’s a protocol

It's all about your hormones!

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Disclaimer:

The information provided in this newsletter is for educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Always consult with your healthcare provider before starting any new supplement, including zinc, especially if you have a medical condition, are pregnant, or are taking medications. Individual needs may vary; this content does not replace the advice of a professional medical expert.

© 2025 Doc Mac Coaching. All rights reserved.​

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