Crazy Sexy Diet: Eat Your Veggies, Ignite Your Spark, and Live Like You Mean It! (2 page)

IN YOUR HEALTH

Dr. Dean Ornish

It’s not just because of what she’s done, which is extraordinary. It’s who she is.

Faced with an overwhelming cancer diagnosis, Kris grabbed the reins and became a voracious student of all things health and wellness. She transformed her life and became a shining example of an “empowered participant” in her body, mind, and spiritual health. She was able to integrate the best of modern medicine and ancient healing traditions to transform a diagnosis of death into vibrant living.

Many patients have told me, “Being diagnosed with cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me.” A skeptic might reply, “What are you, crazy?” To which they might hear, “That’s what it took to get my attention to begin changing my life in ways that have made it so much more joyful and meaningful.”

Not that we look for illness or suffering, but sometimes, for reasons that may be a mystery, there it is. What we do with it makes all the difference in the world. Even when we can’t be cured, we can be healed, becoming more whole. When we become active participants in our healing, it may bring meaning to our suffering, which makes it more bearable. Often, our physical illnesses improve as well.

Change is hard. But if we’re in enough pain, the idea of change becomes more appealing—“Well, it may be hard to change my diet and lifestyle, but I’m in so much pain I’m willing to try something different.”

In 2009, the Nobel Prize in Medicine went to Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn for discovering telomerase, an enzyme that repairs and lengthens damaged telomeres, which are the ends of our chromosomes that control aging. Dr. Blackburn and her colleague, Dr. Elissa Epel, studied women who were under chronic emotional stress because they were taking care of children with autism or chronic diseases.

They found that the more stressed the women felt, and the longer they felt stressed, the lower was their telomerase and the shorter their telomeres. This was the first study providing genetic evidence indicating that chronic emotional stress might shorten a woman’s lifespan.

What was particularly interesting to me was that it wasn’t an objective measure of stress that determined the effects on their telomeres; it was the women’s perception of stress that mattered. In other words, two women might be in comparable situations, but one had learned to manage her stress better by empowering herself and taking charge of her life. As a result, her telomeres were longer.

We tend to think of advances in medicine as a new drug, laser, surgical procedure—something high-tech and expensive. We often have a hard time believing that the
simple choices that we make in our lives each day—what we eat, how we respond to stress, how much exercise we get, and (perhaps most important), how much love and intimacy we have—can make such a powerful difference in our health and well-being, but they do.

For more than thirty-three years, my colleagues and I at the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute and the School of Medicine, University of California—San Francisco have conducted a series of studies showing that what was once thought impossible was often achievable.

We found that a whole foods, plant-based diet (such as the one described in this book), moderate exercise, stress management techniques such as yoga and meditation, and learning to give and receive love more fully (what we euphemistically call “social support”) could often reverse the progression of coronary heart disease, early-stage prostate cancer, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, hypercholesterolemia, obesity, depression, and other chronic diseases.

We found that changing your lifestyle changes your genes. So often, I hear people say, “Oh, it’s all in my genes, there’s not much I can do about it,” what I call “genetic nihilism.” In men with prostate cancer, we found that making these comprehensive lifestyle changes for only three months caused changes in over five hundred genes—“turning on” diseasepreventing genes and “turning off” genes that promote many chronic diseases, including a series of oncogenes that promote breast cancer, colon cancer, and prostate cancer.

Your genes are a predisposition, but your genes are not your fate.

Along with Dr. Blackburn, we also measured telomerase levels in these patients. We found that telomerase increased by almost 30 percent in only three months. And while comprehensive lifestyle changes may increase telomerase, even drugs have not yet been shown to do this.

These studies are empowering many people with new hope and new choices.

So is Kris Carr.

Joy, pleasure, and freedom are sustainable. Because the mechanisms that affect our health are so much more dynamic than had once been realized, most people find that when they make the lifestyle changes described in this book, they feel so much better, so quickly, it reframes the reason for change from fear of dying (which is not sustainable) to joy of living (which is).

These are the practices Kris lays out so intelligently and simply in
Crazy Sexy Diet.
And not only this—she also explains in clear, layman’s language the science and logic behind these choices. Why should we eat plant-based foods? Why are whole grains superior to processed ones, and which ones are superior to others? How much protein, fat, and sugar do we really need, and how do we go about getting them without the excessive consumption of animal products?

Consider this not a diet book, but a guide to living fully; not a meal plan, but a road map to self-empowerment, adorned with Kris’s unrivaled enthusiasm, humor, and compassion.

And by the time you finish this book, there’s a good chance you may love Kris, too.

IS ABOUT TO BE AMAZING!

Rory Freedman

that many among us in the human race are sleepwalking through life. Friends, family members, the masses—it’s incredibly common and incredibly sad. And if you look at yourself, you may notice that you too are among the living dead. You may be tempted to ask, “How did this happen? How long has it been going on for? How did I get here?”

Who cares? Life is short! Don’t waste another second in no-man’s land! That Kris’s book landed in your lap is no coincidence—it is actually a miracle. It’s a miracle because it’s the key to the rest of your life, which starts NOW!

There are few things you can do to impact your life more powerfully, profoundly, and permanently than changing your diet. Every morsel of food that enters your mouth has a direct impact on your body, mind, and spirit. I learned this firsthand when I changed my own diet in 1994. Not only did my body change, but I felt happier, healthier, and more positive then ever before. Something shifted inside me that I never expected or even thought to look for. But there it was. Changing my diet changed my world and completely changed who I was. And it only improved from there. (My best-selling book,
Skinny Bitch,
was born from that change, btw.) Today, I credit everything good in my life to this dietary shift and cannot imagine who I would be had I not seen the light that fateful day. And now, today is your day. That you have all this empowering, compelling information directly from Crazy, Sexy Kris Carr, Unicorn Goddess, is truly a blessing. Do not squander it, mortal! You too can be a unicorn. All you need to do is take the first step. Get excited. Pee a little. This is huge! YOUR WHOLE LIFE IS ABOUT TO BE AMAZING.

First order of business: Create a reasonable, yet challenging, goal for yourself with regards to your new eating plan. It can be as basic as “no soda” or as advanced as “totally vegan.” You decide what you’re up for and what you can handle. But definitely stretch yourself a little beyond your comfort zone. When you figure out what you’re gonna do, then figure out the when. Set a date in the next few weeks, and commit to trying twentyone days with this new lifestyle. Be smart about when you start—birthdays and holidays aren’t the easiest times to change your ways. And be conscientious of the language you use when staking your new dietary claims. Keep it positive and productive. For example: “I’m going to treat my temple to water instead of toxic soda for the next twenty-one days,” as opposed to, “I have to give up soda for a month … how am I gonna live?”

Phase two: Enlist a friend. There is nothing better than having support and camaraderie when tackling a goal. In mid-October 2009, I decided to go until Thanksgiving without
eating any sugar. Six weeks with no dessert. FRESH HELL. (I’m allowed to use negative language since I already conquered my goal. I make the rules.) The first thing I did was recruit two friends to do it with me. And within a few days of starting the cleanse, I recruited three more. While we griped, groaned, and suffered, we did it all together. Three weeks in, one friend hit an emotional bottom and tried to bail out. But we were all there to lean on and he finished successfully with the rest of us. When it was all said and done, two from our sugar-free group felt so amazing, they stuck with it even after the cleanse was over. So choose at least one friend (but hopefully a few) who you know will be up for the challenge, will support you when you’re down, and who won’t let you quit on yourself.

Mach three: Get prepared. Clear all the crap out of your kitchen, stock your fridge and pantry with the right foods, and map out an eating plan to get you through the month. (Kris shows you how.) Have fun with it. Check out new cookbooks, go online for recipes, plan potlucks with friends. You can eat well and enjoy food. And you should!

Final phase: The pinky promise. With enrolled friend, look in each other’s eyes and shake pinkies to seal the deal. State out loud what your intentions are and your start and stop dates—to yourselves, to each other, to the Universe. This is real. This is a binding contract between you and your friend, you and the Universe, and most important, you and yourself. This is the beautiful, exciting, and exhilarating place where the rubber meets the road. This is where magic truly and really happens. This is where you actually CHANGE your LIFE!

Are you ready to live like you mean it?
Are you ready to get out of your slump, over your fear, and plug into your Crazy Sexy potential? For those of you who are new to the Crazy Sexy concept, let me lay it out for you. Crazy = bold, out of the box, forward thinking, and status quo challenging. Sexy = confident, in touch, whole, passionate, and conscious. Sound good? Well, the Crazy Sexy red phone is ringing—loud and clear. Pick up, gorgeous!