Eat To Live

In this week's episode of Your Best Life, Karl interviews Dr. Joel Fuhrman, a family physician and New York Times bestselling author of several books including Eat to Live, Super Immunity, The End of Diabetes, and The Eat to Live Cookbook. Dr. Fuhrman is an internationally recognized expert on nutrition and natural healing, and also specializes in preventing and reversing disease. He's appeared on the Today Show, the Dr. Oz show, Good Morning America, and Live with Kelly and Michael. During this podcast, Karl and Dr. Fuhrman discuss food addiction, the Nutritarian Diet, why changing your diet can change your life, and the difference between feeling well and being well.

Main Questions Asked:

• How do we break bad food habits?
• Is it ever too late to reverse bad eating?
• What are the essential things to do right now for the greatest benefit?
• What is nutrient density and how can we maximize it?

Key Lessons Learned:

Recent History of Food and Health

• It looks like we are living longer is because infant mortality and child mortality, and infant birthing are dramatically lower.
• The quality of life (healthy life expectancy) is much worse today.
• Cancer, heart attacks, and autoimmune disease rates have been increasing unchecked for decades. Food is the primary driver.
• As a result of recent events in nutritional science, we have the ability to wipe out heart disease, win the war on cancer, reverse most autoimmune illnesses, and resolve chronic headaches. It starts in the kitchen.

90% of Nutritional Sciences Agree:

1. Produce
• Eat more unrefined plant produce

1. Processed Foods
• Eat less processed foods.
• Processed and refined foods, e.g. sugar and white flour, have created an obesity epidemic that is linked to heart disease, strokes, cancer, and diabetes.

1. Animal Products
• Americans and the modern western world eat far too many animal products.
• In order to win the war on cancer and heart disease, we must reduce the intake of animal products.
• People who consume higher amounts of animal products live shorter lives with higher rates of cancer and heart attacks.

Is it Too Late?

• The exposure to a low-nutrient diet and nutritional problems in the first 10 years of our life has a greater effect on later life cancers than what you eat later in life because when the cells are replicating and dividing, they are more vulnerable.
• How we feed our children is a bigger contributory effect to cancer development.
• As it gets later in life, the ability for the body to repair diminishes.
• There are tremendous things the body can do to reverse disease when you put the right practices in place. But it's harder and requires more discipline if you had a bad diet as a child.

The Nutritarian Diet

• This diet is focused on nutritional quality, nutrient density, and comprehensive nutrient adequacy as well as making the diet hormonally favorable.
• Dr Fuhrman's mission is to reset your body back to the instinctual drives that tell how much to eat, what to eat, and when to eat.
• G-BOMBS – Greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries, and seeds are beneficial.
• With excellent nutrition and exposure to super foods, we can maximize the body's ability for self-repair and repair damaged DNA crosslinks.
• It takes a few months to build up nutrient stores so the cells function normally. Stick with it.
• Once your body is well-nourished, you can comfortably eat less food and your taste buds will improve.
• As you improve your health, it is possible to get digestion, food intolerance, and allergies fixed. It can take a few months to a number of years but it can resolve.

Food Addiction

• 55% of the American diet is processed foods that don't contain significant micronutrients. This drives overeating.
• 33% of the American diet is from animal products which lacks significant antioxidants.
• When your nutrient needs aren't being met, your body develops cravings and overeats while seeking nutrients.
• Toxic waste products build up in the tissues causing pain and inflammation.
• The body can most effectively repair and heal itself when it's not digesting food.
• An addiction cycle for sugar and processed food is caused when dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin hormones are over stimulated.
• If food gives you energy and makes you feel better, then it's bad for you. Foods that are good for you don't make you feel better. You feel nothing. The goal is a steady state of wellness, not spikes.

Actionable Steps

• Make salads the main dish of the day.
• The most significant recipes you need to learn are healthy salad dressings.
• Make a large pot of soup with a vegetable juice base at least once per week.
• Schedule your 'heavy eating' for lunch. Light dinners and breakfast keep calories to a minimum required while also maintaining a healthy metabolism.
• Keep animal product consumption to less than 10% of your daily calories.
• Remain cautious with fish (high toxic levels in most) and consume less than 10% of your daily calories from fish.

Ideal Macronutrient Ratios

• The ratio of fat, carbohydrate, and protein is unimportant unless the extremes are too high or too low.
• The focus should be on micronutrients not macronutrients.
• A lot of diets that are the most popular are the most unhealthy, and can wreak havoc on your metabolism.

Thank you for listening!

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Links to Resources Mentioned

DrFuhrman.com
The Myths of Happiness
The Happiness Advantage
Give and Take

2 click to tweet links! (Thanks for helping spread the word!)

Tweet: What are GBOMBS and why do you need them in your diet? Find out w/ @drfuhrman @wellnessgroup http://www.Wellness.com/eattolive

Tweet: What is a nutritarian? Find out w/ @drfuhrman @wellnessgroup http://www.Wellness.com/eattolive