The End of Dieting: How to Live for Life (25 page)

BOOK: The End of Dieting: How to Live for Life

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Use gourmet flavored vinegars
. Vinegar is a flavor enhancer. Gourmet flavored vinegars can infuse your salads and cooked dishes with bright and bold flavors without adding oil, salt, or sugar. Stock your pantry with a variety of vinegars so that you always have the right one on hand. Try sherry vinegar, champagne vinegar, and good-quality balsamic vinegar. Experiment with a variety of fruit-flavored vinegars, such as fig, raspberry, pomegranate, orange, and pear. I’m such a fan of fruity vinegars that I’ve been making them available for years on my website. My favorites are still Blood Orange and Black Fig vinegars, which I use for many of my dressing recipes.

Put cinnamon on everything
. You might use cinnamon in baked goods or sprinkle it on fruit or oatmeal, but it also works
wonders in stews and sauces. Add a dash to your cooked leafy greens to curb bitterness, or shake a bit on your carrots or squash to enhance their natural sweetness. Look for Ceylon cinnamon, which is known as “true cinnamon.” In the United States, it’s more common to find cassia cinnamon, a closely related and less expensive variety; but it contains high levels of coumarin, a naturally occurring substance that has the potential to damage the liver in high doses. Ceylon cinnamon contains only traces of coumarin and has a sweeter, more delicate flavor.

T
ABLE
14. F
LAVORS AND
F
OODS OF
I
NTERNATIONAL
C
UISINES

7. Use beans as the major starch source
.

Beans in your diet do a lot of good things for your health:

Beans lower blood pressure.
¹

Beans lower blood glucose levels.
²

Beans lower cholesterol levels.
³

Beans shrink your waist.
⁴

Beans enhance longevity.
⁵

8. Never snack on nuts; eat them with meals instead
.

Eating nuts and seeds with meals enhances the absorption of phytonutrients and fat-soluble vitamins and antioxidants. But if you eat them between meals, they will spoil your appetite, and you won’t be able to eat them with the vegetables at mealtime. If you’re overweight, don’t overeat on nuts, as they are relatively high in calories compared with other foods.

9. Buy fruit in season in bulk or right at the farm
.

Having a big freezer and buying or picking fruit in the summer and freezing it in bags for the winter saves money. A big box freezer pays for itself tenfold in just a few years on all the money you save freezing fruit through the winter. When perishable food is on sale, or at a better price, you can purchase in bulk and freeze. I strongly recommend storing tomatoes and berries self-grown or purchased in season at local farms. You should also buy fresh pomegranate when in season and deseed them and store the kernels (arils) in your freezer.

10. Garden and grow some of your food
.

If you have the opportunity, learn how to garden and grow more of your own food. Plant some fruit trees in your yard, such as a hazelnut or chestnut tree, and add a patch of asparagus and kale to your backyard. Making and jarring tomato sauce from tomatoes grown in your own garden is also a wonderful family activity.

I
N
T
HEIR
O
WN
W
ORDS

Donald changed every aspect of his life for the better once he was clearly presented with the simple logic of the power of nutrition
.

BEFORE:
298 pounds

ONE YEAR LATER:
181 pounds

I’m fifty-one years old. I used to weigh about 300 pounds. When you’re covered in a layer of fat, you know you aren’t at your best, and it’s hard to be happy. I was listless and felt that I wasn’t going to live long if I didn’t do something about my weight. I tried to lose weight on my own but didn’t know how. It’s not easy to break the food addiction that starts in childhood, forced on us by family, friends, food companies, and advertisers.

I heard Dr. Fuhrman on PBS. What he said made sense. It was logical and based on facts. I started to get excited, thinking that the nutritarian diet style might work for me. I decided that this was something I had to do—not just to lose weight, but to feel healthy. I got rid of everything unhealthy in my kitchen—and was left with bare cupboards! I went to a local health food store and bought fruits and veggies.

After nine months, I went from 298 pounds down to 181 pounds, from a 52-inch waist to a 36-inch waist, and from an XXXL shirt to large or medium.

I feel so much better now. I really am a new person. People can tell the difference by my big smile, my good posture, and my newfound energy. My only regret is that I didn’t find out about nutritarianism sooner.

It feels great when everyone who knows you (and even people who don’t!) stop and ask about your weight loss and tell you how good you look. I tell them about Dr. Fuhrman. I want to spread the word and help others achieve their health goals.

It’s not easy to make these kinds of changes in your life, but Dr. Fuhrman gives you the knowledge to succeed. Once you can control what you eat, you can have the inner strength to control everything in your life.

Many people grow their own fig trees. What’s more delicious than a fresh ripe fig? It’s easy to do almost anywhere in the country. If you live in the northern part of the United States, for instance, you can grow your own fig tree in a giant outdoor pot (with a water drainage hole in the side of the pot near the bottom). Then just trim the fig tree back each November to a manageable size to be able to bring it indoors, in a shed or garage, for the winter. Six small trees can produce more than a thousand fresh figs each year.

11. Make fruit sorbets and bean treats for dinner desserts
.

You can make fantastic creamy desserts merely by blending together some frozen and fresh fruits in the blender. You can make them even more diabolically delicious by adding some dried fruit that you’ve soaked in advance in soy, hemp, or almond milk. Use real vanilla beans (I explain how to do this in several of the recipes in Chapter 7). Try using cocoa powder or raw carob powder for a healthy chocolate ice cream treat. It’s so easy! Mix together a frozen banana, a few tablespoons of coconut flakes, two Medjool dates, and 2 teaspoons of cocoa powder—and just like that, you have a creamy chocolate ice cream.

I love a cool, tart strawberry sorbet that I make frequently for dessert. I just blend a bag of frozen strawberries with a peeled navel orange and a squeeze of lemon. You have to try it! You can even make carob or chocolate bean brownies that taste incredible and are made mostly of beans. Take a look at the
dessert
section starting, and you’ll never miss those junk food desserts.

12. Have green smoothies for breakfast
.

Many people love blending kale, lettuce, spinach, flaxseeds, or chia or hemp seeds with some fresh or frozen fruit to make a satisfying and healthy thick “blended salad” for breakfast. This is a tasty way to get your raw kale or collards in your daily diet. Remember: Raw cruciferous vegetables, blended or chewed well, give us the largest amount of isothiocyanates, which have powerful anticancer benefits. Smoothies
are so easy and so quick and have made a profound difference in the health and lives of thousands of people.

Sample Menus

I have developed two weeks of sample menus for you. Week 1 requires very little work for people with little or no time to cook. It takes minimal food preparation and features a few simple easy-to-follow recipes. Week 1 makes use of store-bought salad dressings and vegetable soups. Since most salad dressings and soups contain unhealthy amounts of salt, oil, and other additives, please refer to my lists of recommended products (see Tables 15–18). Add frozen veggies (broccoli, spinach, kale, mixed vegetable blends) to the soup before you heat it up if it doesn’t contain a big nutritarian serving of vegetables.

Week 2 is a more traditional nutritarian menu that includes nut/seed-based dressings, healthful homemade vegetable bean soups, and fruit sorbets. These menus will help you develop your nutritarian cooking skills. They feature more recipes and may require some extra time in the kitchen, but the results are well worth it.

You may not need to make all the items on these menus each day; adjust them to meet your own tastes and schedule. In reality, they will probably provide more than just two meals. Leftover salad dressings and soups are used here to make your cooking more efficient.

Remember to include different kinds of lettuce and greens, tomatoes, shredded onion, and at least one shredded raw cruciferous vegetable in your salad every day. For added veggies, choose from red and green bell peppers, cucumbers, carrots, bean sprouts, shredded red or green cabbage, chopped white and red onion, lightly sautéed mushrooms, lightly steamed and sliced zucchini, raw and lightly steamed beets and carrots, snow peas, broccoli, cauliflower, and radishes. Add different types of beans as well as some cooked vegetables for variety.

Use lemon or lime juice, flavored vinegars, herbs, and spices to healthfully flavor your meals.

The nutritional analysis given for each day’s menu is based on approximately 1,800 calories. The following meals, however, range from 1,200 to 2,400 calories, depending on your needs. If you need to lose weight, you can modify the menus and reduce calories by omitting dried fruits, nut butters, avocado, and bread and then reducing the fruit a bit. If your lifestyle requires a higher caloric intake, increase portion sizes and add more raw nuts and seeds, avocado, or unsulfured dried fruit, such as dried figs or apricots, as well as more beans and more intact whole grains.

Recipes for items marked with an asterisk are included in Chapter 7 of this book. And don’t forget to refer to Tables 15 through 18 for recommended purchased soups and salad dressings.

Week 1: Too Busy to Cook a Nutritarian Menu

Day 1

BREAKFAST

Oatmeal with blueberries and chia seeds.
Combine 1/2 cup old-fashioned oats with 1 cup water or nondairy milk. Heat in microwave on high for 2 minutes, stir and microwave an additional minute. Stir in thawed frozen blueberries and chia seeds
.