Re: Dr. Joel Fuhrman

Personally I found Dr. Fuhrman's writings and nutritional advice to be a godsend. He makes sense of everything else I have read. I read about how calorie restriction is the only proven way to increase longevity but didn't understand exactly how to put it into practice. I read The Rave Diet and Life Style and while it was a very good book, I found that Eat To Live by Dr. Fuhrman made everything simple to put into practice.

I never realized for instance that romaine lettuce has much more nutrition in it than steak. The comparison of course is calorie for calorie rather than pound for pound. Thus it becomes quite simple to understand that by eating a plant-based nutrient-dense diet you will be restricting calories and will be maximizing nutrition because vegetables have the most nutrition and the least calories.

Last year [2009] in January I was 205 pounds and decided it was time to lose weight. So I went on a vegetarian diet that still included dairy. I lost 12 pounds but that was it. In June, I started drinking a lot of grapefruit juice and would sometimes have one vegetarian meal a day and sometimes not. I lost another 12 pounds but I was hungry all the time and I knew that I could not continue eating like this and that when I stopped I would likely gain weight. Then I found Dr. Fuhrman's book, Eat To Live and read it and started following it. The pounds literally melted away and I was stuffing myself on all the vegetables and fruit I wanted. By the end of August I had lost a total of 35 pounds since January. I am still following Dr. Fuhrman's advice and have since given up salt as he advocates. My total weight loss has been as much as 47 pounds getting down to 158 but it fluctuates between 158 and 172 depending on how much nuts I eat.

Dr. Fuhrman also wrote a book called Fasting and Eating For Health which is eye-opening as well. My wife and I were fasting one day a month for a while and have since switched to fasting for 3 consecutive days every couple of months. Interestingly Dr. Fuhrman himself has first hand experience at this having fasted for 46 consecutive days. We are talking about water only for 46 days. He does emphasize that a person needs to be in good health and under a doctor's supervision to fast for extended periods.

My wife also has followed the same course as me, starting off by going vegetarian and then adopting the principles in Eat to Live but she never did the grapefruit juice thing and she isn't as strict as I was. From January 2009 to now [April 2010] she has lost 44 pounds and her goal is to lose another 11 pounds.

I am not saying that I agree with everything that Dr. Fuhrman says but I will say this: he has the Science behind him for what he does say and it makes perfect sense. He is against using salt of any kind and I am not sure I agree with that. He does not approve of The Master Cleanse and I'm not sure I agree with him on that. You can always find an expert that will not agree with the other experts but IF you suffer from heart disease, cancer or any autoimmune diseases or want to eat in a way that will prevent such diseases then you should read Dr. Fuhrman's books. For those persons who find Eat To Live to be too restrictive try the book Eat For Health which promotes the same program but gives it in four phases so that one can make gradual changes or simply stop at whatever phase you choose.

It should be mentioned that Dr. Fuhrman does not forbid eating meat but if one wishes to include animal products in their diet they should greatly limit them to only a couple small portions a week. Personally we will eat seafood occasionally and rarely eat meat. I have had turkey once in the last 16 months and I only have ice cream about 3 times a year now where I use to have it 3 times a week. I no longer crave it like I once did. My wife and I also only have eggs two or three times a month.

Go to Amazon and find the book Eat To Live and read the over 300 customer reviews. Read it and try it for 6 weeks and see what you think. Tweet