EAT TO LIVE IN A NUTSHELL

Eat to Live is the name of my New York Times #1 best-selling book, a mindset, and a way of life.

Eat to Live is a best-selling book. When you eat to live, you look for nutrient-dense foods, recipes, and menus to ensure that the body gets the nourishment it needs for optimum health, disease prevention, and a long life.

The key is in what you feed your body if you want to keep up your good health and live life to the fullest as you become older. You may lose weight and keep it off forever by eating a plant-based, nutrient-rich diet without feeling hungry or deprived.

The Eat to Live lifestyle is the best strategy if you wish to stop using medications and recover from chronic illnesses including diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease (all examples of common conditions that are better treated with dietary intervention than pharmaceuticals or surgery).

When possible, determining the etiology of a condition rather than masking symptoms with drugs always yields better results. You become disease-resistant by consuming as few calories and as many nutrients as possible. Numerous studies have demonstrated a link between calories and nutrition and your potential for longevity and health. The majority of Americans eventually pass away as a result of their harmful nutritional excesses.

The most crucial component of health is nutrition. Your capacity to fully experience life is constrained without excellent nourishment. High-nutrient foods including vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, and seeds include vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals that interact with one another to give humans the ability to

attain the highest level of health and illness resistance. While some of these nutrients are well known, others are still undiscovered. Sadly, the majority of people in our society consume high-fat, fiberless animal products together with empty-calorie, processed, and refined meals, leading to a diet lacking in nutrients. It is understandable why our overweight, ill, and prematurely decomposing population exists.

My whole dietary philosophy is focused on eating more foods with high nutritional content and fewer things with low nutritional value in larger amounts. A healthy diet provides more than a thousand phytochemicals, twenty-five different minerals, and fourteen different vitamins. The immune system and the function of human cells are significantly impacted by these plant-based compounds. Natural sources of these nutrients are foods that are also high in fiber, water, and are naturally low in calories. They give your body the nutrients it requires to maximize its capacity for self-healing and self-repairing.

Foods that are high in nutrients are typically low in calories.

I describe my eating habits using the following formula:

H=N/C

Health = Calories/Nutrients

Your health can be predicted by dividing your vitamin intake by the amount of

calories.

I refer to this idea as my health equation, or H=N/C. It emphasizes how crucial it is to pay attention to your diet's nutrient richness. Your health will only be a small portion of what it could be if you were getting a high level of nutrients in each calorie if your nutrient intake is low and your caloric consumption is high.

Food provides calories and nutrients (energy). Only three substances—carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins—make up all calories. Contrarily, nutrients are obtained through non-caloric food components such vitamins, minerals, fiber, and phytochemicals. These non-calorie minerals are crucial for your health. Eating mostly foods with a high ratio of nutrients (noncaloric food components) to calories is the key to excellent health and obtaining your target body weight (carbohydrates, fats, and proteins).

Due to the level of economic sophistication reached by our civilization, we are now able to

Until we're dead, we eat. The foundation for obesity, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and autoimmune illness is a diet heavy in milk, cheese, pasta, bread, fried meals, and sugary drinks and snacks. Even though these meals are undoubtedly bad for you, that is not the only issue. What we don't consume is the other crucial issue.

When we examine the typical American diet, we find that fewer than 13% of the total calories come from foods high in phytochemicals, such as fresh fruits, vegetables, legumes, intact whole grains, raw nuts, and seeds. This dangerously low consumption of whole, unprocessed plant foods ensures lowered disease resistance, more frequent diseases, and a shorter lifetime. We will never be able to defeat cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and other degenerative diseases unless we address this lack.

In my book Super Immunity, I explain:

The best way to describe "super immunity" is as the immune system of the body functioning to its fullest. Modern science has developed to the point where we have proof that the correct nutrients and raw materials can increase the immune system's defense capabilities by two or three times. The key to great immunity is superior diet. Since the health of the food we consume ultimately affects our own health, we are reliant on the quality of whole foods cultivated from the ground to feed us.

Many people agree that heredity or bad luck can cause disease. The vast majority of us, in actuality, are accountable for our health through the foods we choose to eat. Environment, environment, nutrition, and exercise just outweigh genetics. The main contributor to illness and early mortality is poor dietary decisions.

When eaten in sufficient amounts, fruits and vegetables offer protection against all cancer types. Numerous scientific research have supported this. Most of the malignancies that are most common in our nation are caused by deficiencies in plant foods.

Only this diet plan advises you to aim for more micronutrients in your diet; other diet plans require you to track calories, cut out some items, and include others. Deprivation is not necessary for this eating pattern. No calories exist.

There may be weighing, measuring portions, or counting. You can eat as much as you want, and eventually, fewer calories will make you feel satiated. Your taste for empty-calorie items declines as you eat increasingly greater portions of nutrient-dense, unprocessed meals, and you eventually lose your addiction to them. Your impulse to overeat is also reduced as the micronutrient quality of your diet rises.

Don and his spouse

I wanted to learn more about healthier nutrition after fighting a lost battle with diabetes while taking Glucophage, Actos, and Glyburide and not wanting to start insulin injections, which brought me and my wife—who also has diabetes—to Dr. Fuhrman. We both learned about his revolutionary and life-saving nutritarian diet. My medication has been stopped. My A1C is at a six and I feel more energetic than I ever have. With no medicine, that is a decrease from eleven. Like me, my wife has shed 34 pounds and is no longer taking any medications. We appreciate you, Dr. Fuhrman, for returning our quality of life!

I created the term "nutritarian" to describe a way of living that emphasizes consuming nutrient-dense, whole foods. A nutritarian diet recognizes the health-promoting, medicinal, and life-extension benefits of plant-based foods. There are numerous reasons to choose this way of life. You might want to discuss a recent medical issue. It might be a good idea to achieve and keep your target body weight. You might simply want to improve your health and longevity naturally.

ABOUT A NUTRITARIAN LIFESTYLE:

consuming primarily nutrient-dense, unprocessed plant foods, such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and seeds.

consuming little to no animal products (one or two servings per week at most). consuming zero or practically zero meals that are harmful or utterly devoid of nutrition

such as white flour, sugar, sweeteners, processed foods, and fast food are harmful to the body.

A. ROBERT

Over 400 pounds was me. I had excessive cholesterol, high blood pressure,

persistent rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, and allergies. My decision to no longer be a slave to medication and ill health was ultimately made when my family doctor identified me as a type 2 insulin-resistant diabetic. I read every piece of diabetes literature my doctor had given me and immediately realized it was all rubbish. I therefore started conducting my own investigation, which ultimately brought me to Dr. Fuhrman. I have already shed 200 pounds and am still going. My doctor says that my blood pressure is "low," my cholesterol is normal, and both are excellent. I have no symptoms of diabetes, and my A1C is currently below five. I no longer need to take any of my four extremely toxic arthritic medications; instead, I only occasionally need to take OTC ibuprofen. My allergies seem to have nearly completely vanished. I sold my electric wheelchair and now work on my feet performing physical labor full-time.

Observe these straightforward nutritarian rules:

Include each day:

A substantial salad

2. Include at least one 1-1/2 cups of beans or other legumes in your soup, salad, or other dish.

3. A minimum of three fresh fruits

4. A minimum of 1 ounce of raw seeds and nuts (if you are trying to lose weight, limit to 1 ounce)

5. A minimum of one substantial serving (double-size) of cooked green veggies

Avoid:

1. All red meat and processed, cured, and grilled meats

Fried food items

3. Trans fat and full-fat dairy products (such as cheese, ice cream, butter, whole milk, and 2% milk) (margarine)

4. Sugar, artificial sweeteners, and soft drinks

5. Products made using white rice and flour

This cookbook offers a variety of dishes created to go along with my nutritional suggestions. The density, diversity, and completeness of the micronutrients in these recipes have been optimized. They offer hundreds of different phytonutrients, in addition to the well-known vitamins and minerals, that are crucial for enhancing immune function, preventing cancer and other diseases, and lengthening life.

These are some of my favorites, and my readers, patients, and members of my Member Support Center (see DrFuhrman.com/members) have learned to appreciate them. Why pick unhealthy food and poor health when you can eat delicious cuisine that will enhance your health, help you reach your optimum weight, protect you from disease, and lengthen your life? Try these dishes if you believe that healthy eating cannot be delicious. You might discover that eating foods that improve your health really makes them taste even better.