Start Small: A Conversation With Doug And Stacy

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What would ever possess a couple to live off grid, with no electricity, no plumbing, and so removed from civilization? For Doug and Stacy, it started with small changes that they began to make to improve their health. Little by little, the small shifts they incorporated–such as replacing a plastic shower curtain and changing the timing of meals–took them closer and closer to a lifestyle that was sustainable, fulfilling, health-enhancing and ultimately, yes, off grid. Over time, they lost weight, eliminated brain fog, and regained energy and vitality.

This couple, most known for their YouTube channel “Off Grid with Doug and Stacy”, shows us what’s possible. They remind us that good health is attainable through small steps. And that such steps just might get us to live to the ripe old age of 120, whether we go completely off grid or not.

 

Check out Doug and Stacy’s website: offgridwithdougandstacy.com

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Episode Transcript

Within the below transcript the bolded text is Hilda Labrada Gore and the regular are Doug And Stacy.

In some ways, we’re like the proverbial frog in the pot of boiling water who doesn’t realize what’s happening to him. We often also don’t realize how bad our health is until it has tanked but if we start right where we are right now, making small changes in our environment and to our habits, we might get out of the pot just in time and discover a whole new, healthier, more sustainable, and even off off-grid kind of lifestyle. This is episode 452 and our guests are Doug and Stacy. They’re most known for their YouTube channel Off Grid with Doug and Stacy. They basically did what I just described at the top of the show.  

They got rid of plug-in air fresheners and plastic shower curtains. They started growing a garden, and little by little, they moved from going to the grocery store to becoming the grocery store. They morphed from consumers to producers and self-sustaining ones at that. They highlight the shifts that they made to improve energy, lose weight, and clear up brain fog and they cover how we can do the same. Doug sums it all up when he says we should all be able to live to the ripe old age of 120 and that one step to getting there is to do something uncomfortable every day.  

I will let him explain that one. Before we get into the conversation, I want to remind you that the Weston A. Price Foundation is a member-supported group. In other words, we can only do education, research, and activism with your help. There’s no other way so please become a member of the foundation. It only costs $30 a year for our audience. Go to Weston A. Price and click on the Why Join button and use the code POD10 to join for $30 for the year. Thank you so much in advance and welcome to the family.  

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Off Grid with Doug and Stacy

Become a member of the Weston A. Price Foundation at Weston A Price

Visit our sponsors: Pluck and Optimal Carnivore

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Welcome to the show, Stacy and Doug.

Thanks for having us.

You all used to be city folks and now you are so revered for being homesteaders. What provoked the switch?

I would say probably the quest for health and nutrition and being more self-sufficient. Instead of going to the store, we want it to become the store. Instead of hiring out to do something, we wanted to learn to do it for ourselves. That was a good driver, too. Mostly, it was a health journey, and that is what got us here.

That’s pretty much how it started with health. I had taken a holistic lifestyle coaching class and noticed that I thought I was doing everything right because I was exercising and eating right, but I wasn’t. I had toxins in my life. I always say I glade air fresheners and scented candles in every single room. I do not know anything about seed oils and all the good fats. It was one of those things where I made a little bit of changes and eventually, we got to where we are now, but we’re much more drastic from that point to where we are now. It’s changed our lives for the better and our health.

I love that you talk about little bitty changes because people can get overwhelmed and think, “I need to buy a bunch of chickens and all this land. You can start small.” How did you start back in the day, Doug?

That was it. We built a log cabin, then we rolled out with the chickens and started our garden. Those were the two things we focused on first.

Where we were in our home before we made the transition, I always think the very first thing that I did was change the shower curtain because it was plastic. You talk about little steps, then I was saying I got like a five-gallon glass water bottle in one of those dispensers. We got it delivered by Mountain Valley. It was little things like that. We started doing then we got rid of our television. It was little things then they got us to what he’s talking about.

We moved off to the land and started growing our food and raising chickens. We started growing from there. The more we learned, the more we mastered, and the more we took on after that.

What was your health like, Doug? Stacy was saying that she had some revelations when she took that class and started to make some switches. Did either of you struggle with some health concerns?

Here’s the deal. We’re all like the frog in the pot. You’re probably reading now and you don’t think you might have any issues, but you’re eating processed food. You’re eating the food that’s making you sick. What happens is the longer you’re doing it, the more you are accepting what’s happening to your body, so to speak.

Once we decided we weren’t going to accept that anymore, then that’s when the changes started happening because we started putting more skin in the game, growing our own food, and being more conscious. Even if you can’t grow food, the food you do get, you want to read the labels. If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it. If it’s not food and it’s a chemical, don’t eat it.

You might want to read the labels on the packaging of the food you buy. If you cannot pronounce it, do not eat it.

I heard what was a doctor talk one time, and he was saying, “It takes a long time to get cancer.” A lot of times, people earn cancer. It should be a badge of honor, then, you know what to do to fix it because you aren’t doing things right. You earn getting diabetes over time. It doesn’t happen in a year or two. It takes 10 or 15 years or so. A lot of these things that we were having, like I had a lot of health issues with hormone problems and insulin resistance, and I was toxic. It was on and on adrenal exhaustion. You think you can always go energize your butter, but you can’t. He was having allergy symptoms, and he was stressed out from work.

Slightly overweight and a little lethargic.

When we moved off the grid and started implementing growing our own food, raising our own animals, and getting out in nature, we were barefoot all the time. We lived around the Amish. I would notice the Amish ladies were barefoot all the time. I started being barefoot a lot. We had to take cold showers because we didn’t have running water, and I had to heat the water up, so we had an outside shower. I took cold showers. Not knowing a lot of the stuff that I know now.

In a good way, it was dumb luck.

With grounding, reducing the inflammation, and taking the cold showers. Our nervous system was great. My skin and hair were getting better. My energy was coming back. We’re eating real good whole foods. Over the years, things started changing. I was telling him on the drive here. It was funny, and I had never said anything to him. When I was in my 20s and 30s, I used to teach Montessori school, and I would do classes every half hour.

I was like the physical education teacher. I was down on the ground with the kids. I’d be up and down. I would be doing lots of stuff with them. Lots of movement. I did yoga for the kids. I did the movement. It was every half hour until, from 8:30 in the morning until 12:00. I know my 20s and my 30s, I would do that, and it was like, “I’m getting tired.”

After we moved off-grid, I was still working there because I was working a few days a week, and I was doing the same thing. I had more energy than I do now when I was working because I quit because of COVID. I didn’t agree with all that was going on, but I feel better now. I’m wondering now than I did when I was younger.

Your experience is similar, Doug?

We have more energy. Brain fog is a big thing. Fluoride water, chemicals, and heavy metals. It clouds your mind, so you think clearer now. We don’t have any electricity in our house. We installed solar, so we now have a little bit of electricity, but for years, we have lived with zero outlets in our house. Our mind has been cleared of all the fog. We’re more alert, healthier, happier, and enjoying life.

The other thing we did was we wanted to emulate a lot of the Amish. They call it dinner at lunch. That’s when they have their dinner. It’s their big meal, and they might have a snack later in the evening and they’ll have a little breakfast. We started doing it like that. We would have a big breakfast and maybe eat it. I called it Liner between 12:00 and 4:00. We’d eat then, or sometimes we’d eat at lunch and maybe have a light supper in the evening. We weren’t eating as much. We were intermittent fasting, not knowing that we were because we’d stop eating later in the day.

That dumb luck Doug was talking about.

He lost 50 pounds. It was crazy. If you look at some of our early videos, he had a nice belly on him, but it was pretty good. Fifty pounds is a lot of weight, but he lost a lot of weight from that. It was funny how these things felt we were living the life that we were intended to live out in the woods and nature. The other thing that I think is so awesome is we became part of the process.

We have our own people who take care of our toilets because we have a composting toilet. We are the people who have to worry about how our electricity is taken care of. We’re the electric man. We had to cut our wood. We have a rainwater catchment. We do everything. You wonder where our time goes, but it’s trying to make sure that we have everything that we’re okay.

We’re very in tune with nature now, and I’ll have to look out. I’m like, “The wind is picking up from the North. We have to get ready. There’s a storm coming and make sure I got my wood for kindling. I have my wood that keeps it dry.” I had no idea what North, Southeast, and West were. These things that she never thought about because you turn on the faucet and you get water.

You’re disconnected on purpose.

Those things we got good at and also looking at the weather and knowing what’s going on. The other thing I started doing was working biodynamically with my garden. I would look at the signs and the moon. Where the moon signs would be how I would plant, and I would notice and do experiments like early on when you have the new moon, and it starts to crest. You want to plant your greens like your lettuces because they grow so much quicker.

When it starts to go down and it’s the other phase, you want to go ahead and plant your root crops because then the energy goes down into the Earth more. It’s these little things I started learning. I would do experiments trying them at different times, and you can notice a difference. We got in tune with nature and what was going on with the seasons and the animals. You look at the signs of the animals, you know what’s going on if there’s going to be a storm or if it’s going to pass. We’re good at that stuff now. It makes you in tune. When we come to the city, it disconnects us from all the 5G.

 

Can you feel it, Doug?

You can. You can’t sleep, and you have anxious feelings. I don’t know how to explain it to you. We even stopped going to hotels. We bought an RV because the hotels, when you go in them, they have outlets everywhere and lights everywhere. We can never get a good night’s sleep. We felt that electromagnetic negative field from the electric outlets. We bought the RV, so we have more of our own home wherever we go, and we can limit all that stuff, too.

Bring your own bedding and our own food. The other thing that we did was with seed oils, and everybody knows about industrial seed oils and how not good they are. My grandmother, an Armenian, used a lot of clarified butter or ghee. Not knowing what I knew before, in that time when we’re living the process life and all that, I do a lot with ghee. I believe that healed a lot because it’s such wonderful stuff for your immune system. I use it in my hair and as lotion. I use ghee for everything, and it’s amazing. There’s another thing called 100 times washed. Are you familiar with that?

No.

You have to keep washing it 100 times, and it turns into this fluffy white. It’s not yellow anymore, and it’s like the most wonderful thing for your skin. It takes almost all day to do, but you do it in a bowl. You’ll do it a little bit, go outside, and you keep washing and rinsing it out. You need a little water, and you’ll have this beautiful wonderful cream.

That’s amazing. You’ve learned so much over the years.

We have. We’re on a crash course. It’s immersion learning. If you can do immersion learning, that’s the way to learn anything.

We learned hands-on. When we first moved off the grid, we tried to emulate the Amish. I’d want to go over there when they were doing things if they were canning or butchering chickens, or making butter or making homemade noodles. I was like, “I’m there. Can I help you?” They’re like, “Sure. I can use the help.” That way, we learned. He would go when the guys were butchering a cow. He learned fencing. We learn hands-on and we asked to be part of it. People were very helpful with that. That’s how we did it.

I used to think and I think many of us did, “The Amish are behind the times. They don’t want to use zippers.” We would laugh, and now we realize the Amish were right all along.

They are the sovereign citizens. They have it down. They don’t value government. They value their family unit, babies, and elders. They grow on the land. They live off the land. The land takes care of them. They take care of the land. It’s everything we’re supposed to be is what they are, and they froze that.

I’m glad they did because otherwise, think if we didn’t have that compass? What if we all were living in this modern world, and we had no way to even reference or think about how we could live that way? Sometimes, all the stuff takes is your eye seeing it or your ears hearing it. You hear or see the possibilities that could change your whole life. A whole new world could be waiting for you just because you heard us talk about pooping in a bucket.

He has a poetic way of saying things.

He does. With the Amish, the other thing that they don’t like to do is go to the doctor unless they have to. They use a lot of home remedies and so I learned a lot. I remember that one of the first times I was sitting in the rocking chair talking to one of the moms. This is the first home remedy thing that I came to. It was maybe a little daughter came up, about three years old and the mom had this little jar. It was like a pint-sized mason jar, and it had some stuff in it. I’m trying to look at it because the little kid came up, and she got a spoonful. She pushed down whatever was in there, took the liquid, and gave it to the kid, and the little child went away.

 

I’m like, “What is that?” She says, “We’ve done this forever.” It was chopped-up onions with some honey. It had got more liquid in there, and that’s what she would do. She says, “We’ve done that, and it helps with the children all the time.” You get that thirst and you want to learn more. Over the years, we’ve been doing it. That’s all I use. I just finished writing a home remedy book for your health, home, and body. All the things in it are things that we have in our home, like cayenne pepper, apple cider vinegar, and bentonite clay.

People sometimes think this home remedy stuff is foo-foo. My one friend calls me, and she’s like, “I have the worst headache.” I thought, “Really?” She says, “Yes, I don’t know what to do.” She was going to go somewhere with me. I think we’re going to go to the Amish store. I said, “You need to try some cream of tartar.” The spice you make meringue with or make baking soda. I said, “Put a teaspoon in because it’s loaded with potassium and that little magnesium stuff, too. It should help you. Call me and let me know.” She calls me back in twenty minutes, and she says, “It’s 90% better.”

She just put it in some water.

Take a teaspoon and some water, and then drink it.

Imagine that you don’t need an aspirin.

It’s little simple things like that. I love little nuggets. When you take up a workshop or a class, let’s say you go and you’re there and seeing a million things. If you can go away with one nugget, it’s worth it all.

I wanted to ask you a little bit about something that you discussed here at the conference. You talked about how our world is too sterile. We need to get dirty. Was that in your home remedy book, or is that something you recommend?

When we first moved off the grid, we didn’t have running water. We had to watch how much water we were using. I knew between showers, laundry, and dishes, I had so much I could have for the week. We’d fill up all these five-gallon buckets and jugs, too. We didn’t get to take a shower all the time. I wasn’t washing my hair as much. All of a sudden, I started noticing my hair was not as dry. My skin wasn’t itchy. I didn’t need to put lotion on because I used to always have to put lotion on all the time. I was starting to feel better because I wasn’t taking a shower as much. I noticed I didn’t smell as bad. It was just little things we were detoxing.

If I owned a deodorant company, a soap company, and all these companies, I would want you to take a shower every day. That’s why they program you into doing it so you buy all those products all the time. The minute you get away from it, you get greasy, then you get better, and you start realizing, “Wow.”

With the shampoos, because they’re made with petroleum products, they put that coating on your scalp, and it takes time to detox from that. It’s not good. I started doing natural shampoos then I used apple cider vinegar rinse on my hair. My hair is healthier than it’s ever been in my life. Between that and doing the Redmond salt, I put it in my water. I make the little soleil and put it in my water like a teaspoon.

My hair has grown longer than it’s ever grown. It always stopped at a certain point. Between that then not taking a shower, I wash my hair once every 8 or 9 days, and it’s great. I’ll put shea butter in it. I do like natural things and let it go. It works wonderfully. I can probably go for a month and not have to wash my hair, and you wouldn’t be able to tell.

You said it’s not just your hair but your overall health. You said feeling better. Do you think this has to do with diversifying the microbiome? Talk to us about that a little bit, Doug.

We’re made up of a bunch of different organisms. There are things on our body like dirt and anything microbiomes. The more diverse it is, the better off your body is going to be. When you start killing off strands and getting down to a couple of strands of microbiome diversity, there’s no diversity. It’s like us. You go to ten different stores but you think you have the selection and the choice, but you don’t. They’re all owned by the same people.

The thing is you have to have as much in your life. You want the dirt, soil, air, pond water, farm animals, and dander from them. Everything about it needs to be on your body. We are all in a connection field here, and when we start breaking those connections, that’s where we start not being able to perform physically like we’re supposed to. Mentally, too.

I feel like some of that disconnect starts from when we’re little. We’re taken out of our homes and sent to these buildings called schools, where we spend all day under fluorescent lights at little desks on linoleum floors. It is none of the things you were describing.

Kids are put in these rooms. Think about it. In the prime of their life, when they’re supposed to be active, outside, learning and sucking up all this stuff in education and tribal learning too. We haven’t talked about that, but people learn best by seeing and doing. When you’re around your elders and your big family, that’s who taught the youngsters.

In the late 1800s, we switched to audio learning, which is where someone stands in front and blasts their mouth to you then you’re supposed to hear it and learn from it. That is an inferior way of learning. Schools were all designed to create employees. The Rothschilds and Rockefellers designed the schools to keep you pretty much docile, to teach you that you get a lunch break, and to keep you under control.

Schools were designed to create employees. They keep children docile to maintain them under control.

Now you send a kid who’s supposed to be outside playing, running free using his imagination, and you put them in a box in a little room for eight hours a day. You let them go outside for maybe 30 minutes, and this kid is not sitting down. He’s talking too much and trying to use his body the way he’s supposed to be. Now he’s going to need some Ritalin. He’s going to need some medication because he’s too much, and the cycle goes, and on the Ritalin, he goes. How many kids in America are on this Ritalin stuff knowing that it’s just destroying their lives?

Also, I worked in Montessori schools, and they do a lot with nature. They have outdoor classrooms. A study was done, and it tested these children who were outside in the dirt, having a lot more activity, and checked them against other children that would maybe have a little activity out there. They had a much more diverse microbiome on the skin and in the gut as well as an improved immune system.

How many schools have you heard that are saying they want to get rid of recess?  How does that make any sense?

The kid who’s on Ritalin and has been raised in that system becomes the adult at the computer who’s got seasonal affect disorder, depressed, and on other kinds of medications.

It’s simple. It’s so funny because everyone thinks it has to be this big complex thing to get healthy when getting out, sunlight, and movement. That doesn’t have to be exercising, just getting around doing things. Going for a walk first thing in the morning, within 30 minutes of waking, is the most important thing to help your circadian rhythms. Everything is getting going right, and just doing simple things.

Even not having high-intensity overhead lights at night. Putting some lamps down lower because that light above your head is simulating the sunshine and still thinking you’re supposed to be up. Maybe lighting a candle or setting the mood to be romantic at night and a few things like that. Drinking good, clean water is not expensive. It’s taking time to relax, smell the roses, and do some breathing exercises could help a lot.

It’s not expensive. It’s not complicated.

I’m fully under the impression and belief that we’re to live should be 120 and not have a bunch of drama about it. They are shortening our lifespans, creating sick people, and now, you hear people 30 or 40 years old with ailments saying, “It’s part of getting older. I’m getting older.” That’s the biggest scam out there. Moses was over 100 running up and down the mountain.

I’m hearing you describe this beautiful, idyllic outdoor life. I have incorporated some of the habits that you’ve recommended, Stacy, but I also think about most people living in cities, tied to a desk, and working on a computer. How do they disconnect? Did you all have jobs when you first left your city life? Did you leave those jobs?

I did. When we first moved out, he stopped. He was going to get the farm going when we started because we didn’t have any infrastructure. I was still working. I was driving in and coming back but I like to tell anybody can do any of this. Wherever you live, you can go outside within a half hour, wake up and stretch, and go for a walk if you have a dog.

A dog is the best thing for movement, getting sunshine, and getting out in nature. You could put a YouTube video on and do some yoga. The other thing that I say is to eat real live foods. I ferment. That’s how I store everything. By adding a fermented food, I say, “In each of your meals, try to add a live food,” whether it be growing sprouts or microgreens in your home, which anybody can do it anywhere.

 

I do like the microgreens because you can take them in your car with you. We drive the truck and you can carry it with you wherever you go and cut them off. Eat them when you need them because they are 40 times more nutrition add value to the grown-up plant. Those little things you can start adding to your daily diet.

When I look at my food, let’s say for breakfast, I’m going to make eggs and maybe I’m going to put fermented salsa on it. There, I got a little live food on it with some good real butter. At lunchtime, I’ll have a salad, and on the salad, I’ll have kombucha. There’s my live food. For dinner, I’m going to have a sprouted or microgreen salad. That way, I’m getting a good assortment of live foods to my meal. Doing that and getting outside, you can ground sitting in your chair anywhere. Put your feet on the grass with a little do or even in the dirt and read a book.

One of the things that we say is to do the best you can where you’re at while you’re looking for where you want to be. When you leave that spot, you want to leave that one in a better place so the next person that’s coming on at the beginning of their journey can take up where you left off then you can go to your next place. You can always do a lot of things right where you are now. As you get those things done, you grow your list. If your list feels like you need to move to another place, that’s when you start looking to get that other place.

You’ll get that fire. You start doing things.

You see the results and you feel the results. You want more and you’re bigger. I could see it happening.

Even certain things like something else easy. Most people are magnesium deficient. Get some magnesium flakes and soak your feet at night. Anybody can do that. You might sleep better or be more relaxed, have better bowel movements, or not get so stressed. If you’re going through road rage, that might help you. Who knows? It’s little things that you can start doing. If too many is too much for you to do, just start with one and do it for a while, then move on to the next one.

Inch by inch makes it sense. Yard by yard makes it hard.

I have a story about a friend of mine whose husband is rehabbing a bus. It’s a long story, but maybe for them to have his RV situation, be able to travel, have their own bed, and all the comforts of home. He’s had to live out of the city for a time as he’s done this. He’s grown stronger, lost weight, and happier. He’s told her he doesn’t want to go back to the city ever again. It’s been an amazing transformation because he made one choice that changed everything.

That’s how it is. You’ll never know where things will take you. We never knew we’d be sitting here with almost two million subscribers and changing people’s lives. Who could have ever thought that? We just wanted to go and live healthier for ourselves. That’s why walking in faith is a huge thing for us. I talk about it.

Feeling that push where you should be headed and walking in faith doing that. It has been phenomenal for us. It has changed our life being faithful servants and going. Honestly, that’s how it is. All this stuff, this YouTube stuff, and everything that we do has been a fluke. A lot of people that you’re watching on social media are starting social media accounts in a niche that they think they can make money on, and they don’t have much knowledge. That’s all I’m saying.

By walking in faith, you can change your life and push yourself to walk down the right path.

When Stacy and I started, we were doing this because we had issues. We want to deal with them, then our friend said, “What you folks are doing out here is so cool. You should put the stuff up on YouTube.” We didn’t even know what it was. YouTube wasn’t paying any money. It didn’t matter to us, but we genuinely, in our hearts, want to help people. I believe, too, that’s another reason why this is flourishing so well.

We don’t care about the money or any of this other stuff. We never asked anybody for a time, so that money or Patreon. We just want to help humanity. That’s it. When I die, I’ll know that I fulfilled my life’s purpose because, as Stacy talked about, she saw herself as living in a log cabin and with animal husbandry when we were in the city locked into these city jobs, which would never have the opportunity that dreams to come real than walking in faith.

When I was a kid, too, I would draw pictures of a barn. I’m living in the city and they call me Cowboy. At summer camp, I had a cowboy hat one year and they were calling me a cowboy. In my teens and older growing up, I loved the city. I love the concrete jungle. I lived there and worked there. I traveled to many differences. I’ve been to all the major US cities, but now I feel like I’m fulfilling my purpose. I feel in my heart I always knew. I didn’t know what.

My mom will tell you. One time, I sent her this picture and I autographed it. She said, “Why did you autograph that picture like you don’t know me?” I said, “One day, I’m going to be famous and I want you to have the first picture.” It’s weird stuff like that. You never know how it’s going to happen, but here we are. It’s been wild, but walking in faith is the biggest part for us.

You learn by doing, and when you learn by doing, then you get better at it. The better you get at it, you become more an expert in things. All these people who are very successful say, “10,000 hours of doing something makes you an expert at it.”

 

If you guys are watching anybody on social media or following anybody, make sure they have the 10,000 hours. Weston A. Price Foundation has the time to tell you. This place has been around for a long time gathering information. You have to be careful, especially now, about where you’re getting your information.

I’ll ditto that for sure.

I was thinking when you’re describing walking by faith. I know it has a faith in God component.

It’s my destiny. I wanted to be like I feel right where before I never felt right.

It’s a coherence of what your spirit wants to do and what you do.

Maybe what if. What if there is a design force? As you said, they say, “He has a plan for you.” What if we’re so bombarded by the enemy that we never fulfill our plan because we’re listening to all the other noise? I feel like we finally have got the noise away to where we’re focused on what the father wants us to do, which is inadvertently saving people’s lives.

It’s like when you say getting the noise away. It reminds me of, let’s say, someone now is reading, going like, “I feel inspired. I want to do something.” They get on their phone and spend the next three hours scrolling. That distraction and noise may tamp down what their intuition is or what God is leading them to.

Let me bring that in a little closer. What if you tell a friend or a loved one about your dream or where you’re supposed to be? Usually, the first thing that happens is they squash it. They don’t see your dream like you do, and so they discourage you. They derail it, and that happens a lot.

I think it’d be like, “That’s crazy. You don’t want to leave the city. You’ve got a good job. Why would you do that?”

They derail your dreams because they don’t see your dreams. That’s why you got to be careful with that stuff, telling people what you want to do. A lot of people can’t see it. Some of it might be like jealousy because they can’t do it or they’re scared of losing your friendship. I can’t tell you the amount of people that won’t make a move because of friends and family. They’re stuck in a sick lifestyle that they know they don’t like because of friends and family.

Maybe their spouse is like, “Honey, you can’t retire until 65 or whatever.”

I don’t want to grow food. That’s stupid. We’ll buy it from the store or some people want to stockpile food and the spouse says, “That’s so stupid. The stores are always going to be there.” You don’t know. There’s always that discouragement. You just have to battle through it.

Intuition is huge, especially when you talk about women’s intuition. I’ve talked to a lot of people. It’s funny how you’ll have a couple. One is on board and one isn’t. How do you navigate through that? It was interesting. Most of the people that I talk to would say, “I’m still going to be doing the food how I want to do it. I’m going to grow these things. I’m going to make these things.” I may not get any help from him, but hopefully, over time, eventually, they’ll see it.

Why is the man saying it? What about the woman?

It was interesting. I talked to quite a few people like that and how they’re still going to do it, and hopefully, they’ll get on board. They may. It takes people different times to decide when they’re going to do something.

The biggest hang-ups are friends and family and where to start. Where do I start? How do I get going? What do I do? A lot of people are looking for this magic system or program but just do it. Go for it. Don’t be rigid. Make adjustments as you go. Spend a lot of time figuring out your property. Make sure you find a place where you can do what you want to do. There are a lot of places where you’ll buy property, and you can’t even grow a garden in your yard. Make sure you do all your homework up front with that, but after that, you’re doing what you feel and learning what you like, then going from there.

If not, you’re talking about people and what they can do if they’re living in the city or they can’t get out. I would highly recommend getting pots and making a medicinal little garden on your back deck. You can get a lot of stuff out of these medicinal herbs, especially ones that are perennials that’ll come back every year, like if you’re getting your oregano or sage. You can grow peppermint and all these things in a pot, and you can use them for so much with your food or make tinctures and other things. They’re easy to grow even if you haven’t grown that much.

I remember you giving a talk at Homesteaders of America one time about how to live this way even if you’re in a city. I think that’s part of what you’re saying. Wherever you are, you can start with some small changes to diversify your microbiome but also to live the life you want.

We have people in the city following our channel. They’re doing rainwater collection there. They got raised beds out back, pooping in the bucket, and turned off their electricity on weekends so they could be disconnected. There’s a lot of people doing it. Do what you can where you are. Don’t get hung up on that, then make the changes as you grow.

We were also talking about cold showers. The other thing, if you don’t want to take a cold shower, wash your face in iced cold water. We don’t have warm water in our sink. It comes out cold, especially in the winter. That’s another alternative if you don’t want to do the full ice bath. You could wash your face like that.

I went out. It was very early. We’re staying in an RV park and they have one of those bouncing pads. It’s a big bouncing pad and I love them. There’s so much fun. It was freezing cold out. I went out barefooted. My feet were freezing and I was bouncing on it. I’m getting a little cold therapy like that and I bounced. That was good for my lymphatic system. I did that. It helped me and it made my day wonderful. That’s how it started, but I said in our talk everyone needs to be uncomfortable every day in something that they’re doing.

Aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort.

Aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort.

What does that mean?

That means the more comfortable you’re trying to be, the more sick you’re going to be because you’re not using your body. You’re not getting sweaty. You’re not using your muscles. You’re dying.

You’re sitting in with nice and controlled environment all the time. You’re meant to be hot and sweaty. You’re meant to be cold. You’re meant to get out, move, and detox your body. All those things are important for your nervous system. Working on your breath. All that is incredible.

This is counterintuitive because it seems like most people are trying to go for a cushy, comfortable life.

That’s your downfall. That’s why they build the cities all comfortable. That was originally how they enticed everyone from the country life. More gidgets, more gadgets, and more widgets come into the town, everything is close, then they started controlling the population more.

There’s a movie called Idiocracy. Have you seen it?

No, but I’ve heard of it.

If you guys haven’t seen the movie Idiocracy, it’s crazy.

It’s basically America many years from now.

It is, but they came back a couple of hundred years later. Everyone is walking around with bad forward head posture because they’re looking down.

They’re watering their grass with soda.

They’re drinking Gatorade.

Side note, in India, they’re using soda as bug repellent and insecticides. This is idiocracy live and in-person in India spraying Coca-Cola and Pepsi on crops as a pesticide because it’s cheaper than the actual pesticides. Enjoy your Pepsi and your Coke if you’re reading the episode.

It is very interesting to see how the whole thing unfolds because we watched this many years ago, and we thought, “That looks like how the country is going to be,” but when you watch it now, it’s like wow. People are walking around, sitting in a chair, and not moving around. Everyone is overweight and playing video games. It’s crazy.

We’re so comfortable and killing ourselves by doing that, choosing comfort over discomfort and what’s enriching.

It’s huge. For both of us, I can’t say. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me and you too being part of the process and getting out there. People see us on YouTube and they’re like, “That’s so dreamy,” but it’s not all dreamy. If I’m bottle-feeding a baby lamb, it’s zero degrees out, and I have to go out all morning and night, it’s pretty tough, or I’m going to have to haul a bunch of wood in while it’s raining. It’s not all dreamy and wonderful. It could be uncomfortable but it makes me a stronger person. It makes my nervous system stronger like the cold showers will. It’s totally changed.

I don’t think we were made for sitting in front of a computer, being in front of a screen 24/7, and outsourcing our brain power to GPS or AI. We were meant to do the manual task but also the spiritually and emotionally fulfilling work of gardening and producing our own food, as you said, not outsourcing that to some middleman. It sounds incredibly satisfying and that doesn’t mean it’s not hard.

It’s not. Also, when you talk about gardening in the dirt, the dirt is very healing for the body. It is very therapeutic. We know somebody.

He came back from Iraq and he was having PTSD. He had some hard troubles with it. He was flipping through and started finding homestead channels on YouTube. He started watching those and thought, “Maybe I should give that a try.” It turned out that it was great therapy for him. He created a homestead, started dealing with the animals, and grew food out of the garden. It helped his PTSD. Now he brings veterans to his property as a treatment program and he’s helping many veterans with their PTSD through the farm line.

They’re playing in the dirt. It was amazing like that.

This reminds me of your story because you all sought to improve your own health and now you’re helping so many other people. When we’re in our sweet spot and taking care of ourselves, then we have the energy to fulfill our dreams and make an impact on this world.

That’s so true. It’s one of those things. Every day, as you say, it’s not like rainbows and unicorns, but it’s totally made our life. This is one of those things I get upset and cry sometimes when I talk about it. It’s like, “I will never want to live where I’m now living,” because it’s so enriching. Now, I would say, “I will never live in the city. I love where I lived and everything about it,” but when I go back, it seems so shallow.

Do you mean the city life?

Yes, it just seems that way because it’s not what it’s about. My thing is if I have a roof over my head and food in my belly, that’s all I need. When we first moved out to the country like we did, we sold everything. We decided to cut the umbilical cord, have nothing, and start a brand-new life. We started with nothing. I had a haul of water because we didn’t have water. We didn’t figure out how we were going to get it until we got the rainwater catchment.

I realized, “Look at all the water people are using to flush their toilet,” because I’m counting. How much it costs to do your laundry and to take a bath? People are taking showers after showers. It was little things like that and then I compost everything. If I go to someone’s house, people throw everything away in the trash. I get rid of everything. I compost everything that I have. The animals get it or it goes into the garden. We compost our poop and all that. It’s crazy. You look at all this waste that people go through and all the plastics. I try to reuse everything. It forced us to be very conscientious about our lives and everything that we do.

We went from being consumers to being producers. That’s a big thing people need to think about. Consuming is by design by the big dogs so they get your money out of you and they keep you on the rat wheel. If you guys cut your spending down, then you’re going to free up money to do other things. Frivolous stuff is definitely on the flavor for America.

You’ve got me thinking, and I’m sure the readers, too, about what our purpose is, what choices we’re making, and how the little things can make a big difference. Starting small is important.

Also, how our choices are sabotaged. We think that we have a choice, but we don’t because we’re being corralled, positioned, and broadcast to. Everything you do is being bombarded with their mission of where they want you to go. When we said, “We’re going to sell our house and move to eleven acres,” our friends were melting down. They’re like, “You can’t leave. You’re not going there. That’s stupid. You would never do that.” It’s all made to hold you back so you can’t see yourself, do what you want to do, or be the person that you want to be. You’re always confined to the program and the matrix.

You have to shut out that noise so you can get back in touch with who you are to understand your calling. I am so grateful that we’ve got to connect and that our paths have crossed in this divine way. I want to ask you the question I would love to pose at the end, and it has to do with health. If the reader could do one thing and take one step to improve their health, what would you recommend that they do?

I would say get out in the morning, get some sunshine on your face, put your feet in the dirt, and stop eating food with ingredients that you can’t pronounce. Those will be the three easiest things right off the bat.

 

I’m a big person for movement and lymphatic movement. For anybody, even if you can’t get out of a chair, you need to look into how to do a lymphatic massage because if you look at your lymphatic system, it goes through your entire body, and it does a lot of stuff. It gets rid of the way. It’s like the garbage man of your body.

Think about a toilet. If you keep going to the bathroom in the toilet and the toilet never flushes, it’s going to get backed up and going to be a big mess. By doing basic lymphatic massage, it can help flush the toilet in your body. You have lymph nodes everywhere. There are probably six key places in your collarbone, your neck, underneath your arm, in your belly, you’re groin area, and behind your knees. By doing some basic massage or tapping, it can help unplug the toilet a little bit.

I can tell you, there’s a doctor. It’s Dr. Perry Nickelston and he’s Stop Chasing Pain. He’s got some good videos. He calls them The Big Six and they’re simple little exercises. What that can do is if you’re suffering from pain, a lot of people might feel it in their neck, maybe feel like they have lymph nodes swollen or under your arm. Even if you feel it in your belly, you press into there, and you feel that get sore and tender, that means that there’s something clogged up in there, especially under the collarbone. If you feel a little pain or feels a little tender, that could be that you’re a little clogged up there. Let’s say you’re in the airplane.

Some people would fly. You have to do certain things. If you’re in a car for a while, take a train or a bus, you’re out and not able to do anything. You’re in the house or something is happening and you’ve got a lot of people coming to your house to visit and you’re not able to work out, move, or do anything, you can do a lymphatic massage.

I’m going to tell you. I use a rebounder also, where I bounce on a mini trampoline, but this is something that anybody from a little kid. I teach grandkids how to do that as well as a person who’s 100 years old and maybe sitting in a wheelchair that can’t get around. That would be so beneficial for the body to help flush the toilet in your body.

Powerful words. I love both of you so much. Thank you for your time.

Thanks for hanging out with us.

Thank you, Hilda. This was great.

 

About Doug and Stacy

Doug OGS (off grid specialist) and Stacy HLC (holistic life coach) live the pioneer lifestyle in the 21st century in an 1800s-style log home they built themselves. They have been living off grid like the Amish and homesteading with no public utilities for fourteen years. They value the experience of doing for themselves, leaving a world of instant gratification and drive-through windows.

 

Important Links

• Homesteaders of America
• Stop Chasing Pain
• OffGridWithDougAndStacy.com
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