I recently send out a questionnaire to some of my clients and want to share with you a question that I asked them.  The question was HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN STRUGGLING TO LOSE WEIGHT.  (How would you answer this question?)

If you are like the many responses I received you probably have a similar situation ranging from “I AM ALWAYS TRYING TO LOSE THAT EXTRA 10 pounds” to “I have been struggling with overweight MY WHOLE LIFE”.

If I am honest about it, I suffered the same DIS- EASE, obsessively trying to control my weight which never seemed to be right for my body and head…I accomplished major weight losses throughout my life by  deprivation dieting or excessive exercising only to find myself back in the “FAT ZONE” and feeling even more miserable. Firstly because I had broken my promise that I would never be fat and again and secondly because I felt out of control with my food. Deprivation dieting and excessive exercising left me just plain miserable and in an unsustainable position.  I mean how long can you really last on steamed broccoli and grilled chicken before you turn into a starving binge eating carbo-holic? And how many hours can you hang out in the gym before your boss notices you are late for work everyday?

So I made some discoveries and some changes

• I turned my pain into my passion. Reading, writing, learning and experiencing FOOD and what actually works.

• I used my own body as a science project and tried many different ways of eating, discovering that most were unsustainable and the weight gain followed.

• Uncovered my own “issues” (not food related) that were keeping me weighed down and fat.

Regardless of whether I went to WEIGHT PROGRAM meeting (there are many and you know them well) or labeled myself as vegetarian, vegan, raw… it didn’t work for long.  My biggest discovery is that I removed all labels from my eating. I EAT FOR HEALTH (and surprisingly enough NATURAL WEIGHT LOSS is a side effect of that!)

We’ll continue to talk about what exactly eating for health really means and my biggest pet peeve, which is the myth that eating healthy has to be boring and that you would be sacrificing all the good stuff.

So ask yourself :

• Are you happy at your current weight?
• How would you feel if you could lose weight NATURALLY?
• How would you feel if you really loved the food you ate every day?

TO BE CONTINUED: ( we need to talk) What does eating for health really mean, How can you do it sustainably, How can you make simple, quick and easy recipes that will excite your palette, and How can you get out of the diet traps that leave you FAT.

Eating With Friends at DrFuhrman's Health Getaway

First, make sure you are eating nutrient rich foods

Second, make sure you are eating because you are hungry, not for any other primary reason.

Third, stop when you are about 75% full.

BTW, I listed a bonus step below.

One of the reasons why I am in the position to be publishing NutrientRich.com is because I have had the privilege of learning from DrFuhrman and others who understand health and lifestyle science.

Over the past 20 years, I have continued to learn more and more, and finally identified the cornerstone of nutrition itself, nutrient rich nutrition.

In addition to reading books and hanging with the pros, I learn from others experience and I do so at live events all the time. Every time, I come back from a live event, my life and style of thinking and living takes a major leap forward.

Even yesterday, after hearing Dr Fuhrman nearly 500 times in my life time, I learned new information about eating that will help me make “Tweaks” in my eating patterns that will last a lifetime.

One of the biggest things I learned yesterday was more about the mind set that enables you to avoid overeating.

Dr Fuhrman made a point about forgetting you have a stomach. What do you mean John Allen? How can I forget I have a stomach??

Well, assuming you are eating nutrient rich foods, when you finish eating, you should not feel your stomach any more than you feel your spleen or your kidneys, as we don’t “feel” either.

That being true, if you feel your stomach after you eat, in a significant way, you have already overeaten.

This was a big wake up call for me, who tends to eat more than I need mostly because I just love trying new nutrient rich foods and meals and yes, I eat emotionally at times. (telling on myself ) many people do.

So yesterday I practiced this “Exercise with Food” as Dr Fuhrman calls it and got up from the table without feeling my I had added another body part around my waist (i.e, without feeling my stomach).

It was not easy at first, given there was a whole buffet of pre -prepared foods that were incredibly healthy. The bottom line, is, I was was already full.

I ate just enough at lunch, so? that I would be hungry from dinner and I must say the pleasure of dinner was so much better!

So there are three basic steps you can take to learn how to eat for health and avoid over eating.

1. First, make sure you are eating nutrient rich
   
2. Second, make sure you are eating because you are hungry, and not for any other “primary” reason.
   
3. Third, stop when you are about 75% full.

Bonus step: Consider how else can you get pleasure and keep yourself occupied other than eating. It’s not a pastime, not unless you want to have to pass allot of time trying to lose weight.

That’s how you avoid overeating, even when it’s healthy, nutrient rich food!

Two things happened this month that caused me to rethink my diet, supplement regimen, and disease-prevention strategy. First, I read Michael Pollan’s latest book, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual (Penguin, December 2009), which wasn’t so much surprising as confirming of his stance taken in his other nutritional tomes, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (Penguin, 2009) and The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Penguin, 2007). In short, Pollan believes the standard American diet is woefully deficient in vegetables–not lean proteins, not low-fat dairy products, not healthy whole grains–and thereby void of important vitamins, minerals, and other micronutrients. Our dietary shortage of vegetables and other plant-based foods is the reason why rates of “Western” diseases–cancer, Type 2 diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease–are significantly higher today than they were when people ate more plants, say 100, or even 50, years ago.

But what upsets me, a relatively “healthy” eater whose diet is made up of mostly lean animal proteins, couscous, nutty breads from Whole Foods, Greek yogurt, and that must-have weekly bag of wild-rice sesame sticks, is that, in his advocacy of a plant-based diet, Pollan isn’t just talking about a side of broccoli with dinner every night. As he says: “Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.” And by mostly plants, he doesn’t mean mostly chicken and rice, with an accompanying half cup of green beans.

And this is the same point Joel Fuhrman, MD, author of Eat For Health: Lose Weight, Keep It Off, Look Younger, Live Longer (Gift of Health Press, 2008), tried to hammer home during an in-person interview yesterday. To live your best, lose weight, and help prevent cancer and other common “American” diseases, you have to eat micronutrients, found mostly in leafy green vegetables, and not submit your body to a toxic digestive cycle that ebbs between food addictions and empty calories on a tide of animal products, flours, sugars, salts, and other non-plant-based products.

While such a dietary approach may seem restrictive at first, it makes complete sense when you do the reading–or in my case, the listening–and Whole Foods Market is so taken with Fuhrman’s philosophy that the store has installed the doctor’s Aggregate Nutrient Density Index (ANDI) in all its markets to teach customers the micronutrient-to-calorie ratio of many common foods. (For example, kale has the highest ANDI rating of 1,000, while chicken breast rings in at a disappointing 27.)

But don’t just take my word on the vegetable imperative: Do the reading yourself. Pollan’s book is 112 short, easy-to read pages. And soon, Whole Foods Market will start selling Dr. Fuhrman’s literature and self-analysis software for a slight $19.99–the package allows consumers to input their daily diet and family history to discover their own micronutrient deficiencies and nutrition-based disease risks. And in the meantime, what do you think: Can we save America’s healthcare crisis if people just simply ate more, or mostly, vegetables?

Published medical research already documents this as the most effective weight loss method ever recorded in medical history. There was an average two year weight loss of 53 pounds. Most importantly they kept the weight off.

DrFuhrman’s complete two–book set actually teaches you how to prefer a NutrientRich diet–style over a disease–promoting diet. The hallmark of healthy eating is to consume more foods that contain a high nutrient density and less food with a low nutrient density.

To make it easy, Dr. Fuhrman has scored thousands of foods so that in each of the 4 phases, the nutrient density of the suggested menus increases. The outcome is that when you eat enough NutrientRich foods you can reverse most medical problems without drugs. If diets never worked for you in the past you will now understand why and you will be motivated to lose your excess weight and get well again. Eat For Health can save your life.

Dr. Fuhrman‘s MANDI food and meal scoring system (patent pending) lets you know exactly how healthy your diet is. You can see this as well using the Food Class System at NutrientRich.com. You can choose your own level of nutritional excellence and you can move forward to a higher level at your own pace when you are ready or you can pump it up to phase four to get maximal weight loss and therapeutic effect to reverse disease. Nutrient Rich Food, Not Drugs, Is The Prescription

Book two contains the menus and recipes. It teaches you how to make this diet work easily for you and your family. With over 150 delicious and easy recipes, it makes Nutrient Rich eating truly gourmet. From strengthening your taste buds to dealing with temptation, restaurant eating, to eating on the road, this program will make sure you can do it, enjoy it, and even fit it into your busy schedule. It is guaranteed to change your life forever.

• A scientifically proven system to have you lose your food addictions and actually prefer NutrientRich foods over nutrient poor foods.
• A gradual, 4 – phase program with custom menus so you can adjust the program to your individual needs and preferences
• Everyday recipes that taste phenomenal and are easy to make
• A nutrient scoring system to measure the nutritional quality of your diet
• Remove toxic hunger and you will succeed at losing weight and keeping it off forever
• Use Nutrient Rich foods to beat disease, get rid of diabetes, lower your blood pressure and cholesterol without drugs and protect yourself against cancer and get more pleasure out of eating.

There isn’t a more successful approach to eating anywhere, because unlike diets where weight loss is the primary driving factor with health second, when you Eat for Health, the nutrient value is considered first. You eat Better Not Less, and naturally eat less making weight loss .

Recently I had an experience with Dr Fuhrman than once again solidified my certainty that there is no better value for health and nutritional excellence on the entire Internet than DrFuhrman’s Members Support.

Membership Benefits & Join

I was working with a client who has type 2 diabetes who I sent to DrFuhrman’s member site. Here’s some of the dialogue from the member center.

And I might I point out, this advice, which is just the tip of the iceberg and certainly not limited to someone who has diabetes, is less then ten bucks a month. Go and find a doctor of Dr Fuhrman’s caliber who will even know you exist for that, let alone give you life changing answers to your question.

Here was the exchange.

From: Dr. Fuhrman [ Joel Fuhrman M.D]
Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 6:08 AM

Hi Cindy,

Yes, I think endocrinologist are dangerous and starting a type two diabetic on insulin when diet and exercise could have lowered the glucose and the weight is malpractice.
Insulin causes weight gain, worsens the diabetes, promotes vulnerable plaque and takes a person at borderline risk if heart attack or stroke and makes them high risk. This has already be demonstrated in various studies to increase death rate. I am so glad you have decided not to take it and to solve the real problem instead. If you made a drastic switch and your glucose skyrocketed, then you did not do what I recommend. That is why I have the member forum, so you can communicate with me to prevent errors and customize the recommendations to your needs to assure success.

In the Ask The Doctor forum, show me what medications you are taking, what exercise you do, voice your concerns there, write out your proposed diet for me to tweak and explain more and let’s get started on the road to becoming non-diabetic. Looking forward to the exciting opportunity to working with you and helping you conquer these health challenges.

Warmly,

Dr Fuhrman

From: Cindy
Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 10:12 PM
To: ‘Dr. Fuhrman’
Cc: ‘John Allen Mollenhauer’
Subject: My Diabetes

Dr. Fuhrman:

Do you think that if my endocrinologist thought I would have a heart attack or stroke by starting me on insulin that she ever would have given it to me?

I happen to be a professional writer who has a tremendous desire to research everything. That makes me a very informed consumer/patient. I spent the first 44 years of my life without an ailment and have spent the last 4 years waking up every day in pain and worried about some new condition that has been thrust upon me. Asking for help is, by far, the hardest thing I have ever had to do. So the questions I ask, I do not ask out of idle curiosity. I ask them to gain insight from someone who knows far more than I on the subject, and to better understand a condition or circumstance.

I have opted to stop the insulin because of my unwillingness to be dependent on it and the fear of what it will do to my body. My focus is now 100% on my eating regimen, uncovering what can and will turn my condition around, and making the required changes a permanent part of my life. However, when you have very few good days, a drastic dietary change can only make that situation worse. The last time I made a drastic switch to the diet you recommend, my blood sugar skyrocketed to over 450 and almost put me in the hospital. Thus, my resistance is not a resistance to the change: it is out of fear that I could have a repeat of what happened before – which no one could explain!

Membership Benefits & Join

This exchange, is invaluable, and probably just changed Cindy’s life, you can count on DrFuhrman giving it to you straight. If you haven’t read Eat for Health, today’s your day to start.

John Allen Mollenhauer