\Welcome, talented viewers, to this edition of Healthy Living as we present the second and final episode in our series, “Australia’s Mission X: Finding Health & Happiness,” featuring Ralf Behn, the raw vegan founder and chief executive officer of Mission X and the Australian Institute of Health and Nutrition.

Mission X is obviously a big project I’ve been working on for the last four or five years. It is a place where we educate people in regards to health questions, fitness or we obviously have the physical aspect, meaning we teach sports, martial arts, boot camps, and personal training. I have an office in the city where I do coaching and counseling for certain problems like relationship coaching or eating disorders.

Weight loss is a big issue for many people because 60% of the Australian population is overweight or obese and the numbers are rising. Diabetes is obviously the biggest one right now. So I help to educate people and obviously guide them out of the misery towards the light back to a normal life and health and happiness.

Mr. Behn is also a raw-vegan nutrition expert, an athlete, an entrepreneur and the best-selling author of “Unlocking Your Health and Happiness.” He is known as one of Australia’s leading authorities on healthy living, disease prevention and the raw vegan diet.

If you live on a raw vegan diet or even on a vegan diet your energy level is so much higher than the average person, because obviously you do not need so much energy to digest the food because it just works the way nature has designed us.

But what led Mr. Behn to pursue the path of informing and advising others about health, holistic living and disease prevention?

I’ve always been an athlete. I started martial arts when I was age seven, so that was my first exposure to obviously learning martial arts, the mental and physical side of martial arts, and then later on I got my hands on some amazing books and attended seminars and I was so keen to learn more and more about the whole subject, vegan lifestyle, raw vegan lifestyle and holistic living as close to nature as possible. So it made so much sense to me, so I was fired up and since then I’m obviously practicing myself, I teach it, I live the dream and lead by example.

Can you tell us why being a vegan is so good for the body, the mind and the soul? And does it give you all the energy that you need in your very energetic lifestyle?

My whole Mission X journey is a high-energy project to show people how happy and how energetic you can actually be on a vegan lifestyle, especially a raw vegan diet or lifestyle. And to answer your question, which is a great question, when you are a vegan or raw vegan, you live so close to nature because you only obviously eat things that were made for our bodies from nature.

We’ve been eating millions of years that way and just recently we changed that dramatically. So the soul and the mind obviously get clear, you get clarity, you become razor sharp because you only eat foods with the same vibration as our body, our cells. So we feed our cells living food, enzymes and it obviously comes back, so that’s why you have a lot of energy and you’re naturally happy because happiness comes from within. Success is not the key of happiness; happiness is the key to success.

We asked Ralf Behn to discuss his book, “Unlocking Your Health and Happiness.”

So the book is actually written in an easy-to-understand way because I want to bring our message out to the mainstream, to make health and fitness and a vegan lifestyle cool again, to show how easy it is to live close to nature and apply self-care and self-education on a daily basis.

The book is structured in three parts. The first part is showing and uncovering the misery, such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes. We all know a bit about it because we see people dying around us or getting sick on a daily basis. And we have obviously the statistics and information in the media (about it).

The second part is showing the reason for the misery, uncovering the reasons for the misery and that’s a part that people have no clue about anymore, why it all happens to us, why cancer is now the number-one killer, heart disease number two, and those two diseases alone cover about 80, 90% of the deaths these days and the third part is showing the solution for the misery and giving you hands-on advice, recipes, workouts, and a lot of things so you can actually start right now and change your life.

Are there any particular examples of how people have changed their lives or changed their health that you can share with us?

My clients, they inspire me pretty much every day. Because when I see the changes they make in their lifestyles, when I see their bodies changing, they are losing weight, they’re toning up. And not only the look, it’s about things happening inside. Obviously, they're more stress resistant.

We do boxing and martial arts, which obviously is my background, I apply that in all my sessions and all my sport activities. We do a bit of boxing and kickboxing and even partner drills and people love it because it helps them to deal with stress.

It’s not only what we eat but even what’s eating us. And that’s very important, as well, to understand. That’s why the mind kicks in all the time. And it’s a holistic approach. That’s why my book is a holistic book. It addresses all the parts, like non-toxic relationships, fresh air, sunshine, fitness, nutrition, good sleep and so on.

Can you just give us a better understanding about protein in the diet? And where do you get protein from your raw vegan diet?

That’s a great question. That’s actually the first question I get myself when people find out that I’m a raw vegan, they first say, “Wow! You look so good, so healthy, and you have so much energy and you do so much, so many cool things and where do you get your protein from ? How do you do it?” And even sometimes vegetarians and vegans ask me that question, which obviously shows us that there is still a lot of misunderstanding; one of the biggest topics where the misunderstanding is just so huge is about our protein intake and where it is coming from.

Look, we actually don’t need much protein. When someone asks me the question, I sometimes ask back, “Do you know how much protein you need, or do you know how much you actually get right now?” So obviously it is a marketing-induced misconception. So they think now you have to eat a lot of meat and dairy to actually get the protein. But answering your question, there is so much protein in our green foods and I love the greens.

Just to give you an example, spinach, for example, has 30% protein, and cheese, has 26% protein, but the cheese comes with 72% fat at the same time. While our greens, delicious spinach, for instance, comes with almost zero fat so we have 30% protein with zero fat and on the other side, we have almost the same amount of protein, but a lot of fat. That’s why people gain a lot of weight in a short amount of time and they don’t know why because they have no explanation for it.

So I show another few examples just to make my point clear. Asparagus, for instance, 27% protein. Of course, lettuce, bok choy, all the greens have a lot of protein, ranging from 10-30%, which is massive. And the good thing is the body can assimilate it so much easier than any other protein coming from an animal-based protein.

Even fruit, I’ll just quickly show you, tomato is a fruit as well, most people don’t know that, has 12% protein. Mandarins, 7%, mandarins and oranges 7%, so there is obviously a lot of protein in everything we eat coming directly from nature.

Is the vegan diet, the new cool diet, the trend of today’s society?

It definitely is a new, cool trend, and more and more people are moving towards that direction because they notice it is the best lifestyle, it is not clogging up your arteries. What happens when you eat so much meat and dairy products, topics like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, are not even coming up if you live on a healthy, vegan diet, on a low-fat, vegan diet, especially. And it definitely will give you so much energy and a long, happy life, that’s for sure.

Ralf Behn is a lover of animals and this is yet another reason he chooses the winning plant-based diet.

We have no right to kill or slaughter them. So it is a very good move to go towards a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle. Because you save the animals, you save the planet and you save your own life because that’s what makes you (full of) vitality and happy.

Our warmest regards to you Ralf Behn and all the other members of Mission X for your love and dedication in spreading a message of peace, love, health and happiness.

Make a difference in your own life using less toxins, less packaged stuff, eat more whole foods, maybe switch to a raw vegan lifestyle. And obviously do the right things to yourself, to the planet, to the animals, and everything will be fine. And you will gain a level of happiness and self-confidence and self-awareness you have never had before.

For more information on Mission X, please visit www.MissionX.com.au
Ralf Behn’s book “Unlocking Your Health and Happiness” is available at the same website
Mission X TV can be viewed at www.YouTube.com/user/MissionXTVi

Joyful viewers, thank you for joining us today on Healthy Living. May the day soon come when harmony abounds in all corners of the world.