2 August 2015

Eat To Live - @DrFuhrman (by @NLi10)

A short while ago one of those awkward epiphany moments happened.  I spotted online that one of the Celebs i respect most - Penn Jillette - had shed 100 pounds in a bit to help with his medical problems.  At first this was a bit of a curiosity, I'd obviously not been paying attention - this clearly must be something he'd been working on for a good while. Turns out he'd lost that weight between December and April this year - as someone who works in Public Health this was suddenly professionally interesting.

Granted, a lot of people will go on short term diets and lose weight, but I'm familiar with the way Penn thinks from books and podcasts, and this would have been a well thought out and carefully documented process (indeed - there will be a book).  Through the podcasts I found out that he was under the tutelage of Ray Cronise - a self taught fitness and nutrition researcher (ex NASA).  This however isn't publicly available yet, although the first paper has been published.  

The food portion of Ray's super regime is based on years of research by Dr. Joel Fuhrman - who first published the Eat To Live series 10 years ago, but updated them in 2012.  So I started to investigate this.  There is a lot online that can give you a quick overview, but I wanted to do it properly.

I'm a tall skinny guy, and only recently got my mythical BMI score up to what the charts consider 'normal' - and that took discovering an underlying illness.  It's not typical behaviour for such a slender guy to be picking up diet books with his birthday money, but that's exactly what I did.


You see unlike most of the unsuccessful diet regimes that I've seen people try, here weight loss is just something that happens on the way to health - and health is something we all need.  I have a chronic respiratory condition, and frequently suffer from blocked sinuses.  It really does feel like I permanently have a cold - could something like this help me?  Also - if this truly is a better way of eating then surely I'll be able to gain weight and more importantly energy?

After digesting the podcasts I've been buying fruit on a weekly basis to eat at work and have forgone the stodgy sandwiches and disappointing canteen food.  One of the main take away messages of the Nutretarian way of thinking is that you can't eat too much raw, fresh fruit and veg. Granted the 'diet' went out of the window on holiday in Spain, but now I'm back and the books have arrived I can give it a proper go and see what happens.

Well - once I've finished reading - the first step is to read the WHOLE book.

But with incentives like this at the end of it all


who could refuse?

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