Right now, we say 80% of our population is overweight. I say 90% sometimes because if I exclude people who smoke cigarettes which is about 10% and people who acquire diseases keeping them thin which is about 3% or 4%, then we’re close to like, I don’t know, more than 90% of the population has to be considered overweight. So that immediately wipes them out of the potential for living a long life where they reach their elder years and maintain an excellent health.
So one thing we have to do, we certainly have to control overeating. We have to control hunger as a means of living a long time because long-lived people do not overeat and don’t stuff themselves. They’re not addicted to the food. They don’t really have any strong addictions in like they don’t have a lot of alcohol consumption but a little of alcohol consumption is possible. They can’t eat a load of junk food but a little as possible to still survive. In other words, they’re not really addicted to any strong food to be relatively thin. In the Eat to Live book and my writings on the website, we talk about controlling hunger. The 3-dimensional model takes into account calories of food, the volume of the food which includes fiber volume and, of course, the nutrient density of the food. Any diet style or nutritional advice that doesn’t take into account those 3 dimensions of hunger isn’t quite giving you the optimal ability, opportunity to control your hunger and to maintain an optimal weight.
In other words, we have to consider all those variables. Most diets just control calories. They just try to count portion sizes, reduce calories and don't control for volume and nutrient intake, which leaves you craving and feeling ill all the time if you don’t constantly eat food.
But there are some diets out there which just try to teach you to eat volume but they don’t control the nutrients. They didn’t understand that the body needs sufficient amounts of nutrients, especially antioxidants, biochemicals that fuel the detoxification mechanism of the body. And without a sufficient volume of those nutrients, our body maintains a high level of toxic waste products that then lead to withdrawal-like symptoms or so-called hypoglycemic sensations when you’re not eating food because your body is always borderline malnourished.
So one thing that the nutrient rich diet style and this lifestyle I recommend teaches is that nutrient density, nutrient per calorie density is critically important. That’s one thing that makes it stand out from other nutritional advices – that it recognizes that the nutrient per calorie density of food is something we have to consider when looking to design a diet for optimal health. Because as we get a diet that’s higher in nutrients, we need more foods that have a high nutrient per calorie density that supplies us with a large amount of volume and a large amount of nutrients which make us demand accordingly less calories and prevents overeating.
At the same time that high nutrient density diet which prevents us from overeating, at the same time supplies us with a high level of phytochemicals and antioxidants that are necessary to survive a long time in our toxic world. We don’t live in the same world that was around here 2000 or 5000 years ago. We live in a more toxic world today and we particularly need a diet rich in foods that maximally fuel the body’s detoxification and self-reparative mechanisms. And that diet of course has to be high in those phytonutrients, which are in natural food, especially green vegetables, various fruits, beans, seeds and other high nutrient foods that scientists have discovered are rich in those phytonutrients and antioxidants.
> Part 3 Avoiding Toxicity and Deficiencies
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Dr. Fuhrman is a New York Times best-selling author, nutritional researcher and board certified family physician specializing in nutritional medicine. Learn more by visiting his informative website at DrFuhrman.com.
John Allen Mollenhauer is the founder of nutrientrich.com a Nutritional Education Trainer, and leading authority on Performance Lifestyle, which teaches people how to live a healthy lifestyle successfully and develop Your Lifestyle to better achieve your goals.
Hey John what does a day or a week look like to you? What does your daily diet typically look like?
Larry,
My mindset and skill set (experience) is what has gone through all the significant evolution, but my daily diet appears very simple. Basically, fruit, multiple salads / soups (raw and cooked), nuts seeds, nutrient rich desert. Eat when I’m hungry.
John