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 Joel Fuhrman, M.D. is a board-certified family physician and one of the country’s leading nutritional medicine experts. He is a frequent guest speaker at hospital grand rounds and has lectured at benefits for the American Heart Association and the U.S. Olympic Team. Dr. Fuhrman has been interviewed for hundreds of magazines, radio, and television shows and he is widely published in various medical journals. Dr. Fuhrman’s most recent book, Eat For Health, guides the reader through a gradual transition to increase the level of micronutrients in his/her diet, while losing the addictive and psychological dependencies of unhealthy foods. Dr. Fuhrman is the author of Eat to Live: The Revolutionary Plan for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss, which has gone through 11 printings in hardcover and 6 printings in paperback. Below is an excerpt of my interview with Dr. Fuhrman.
CRAIG PEPIN-DONAT: Now, Dr. Fuhrman, you are responsible for providing some of the most extensive educational information in the world related to health and nutrition. Now you have a new book, Eat For Health, and it happens to be a two-book set. We’re fortunate at FitAdvocate.com to have been able to review that book, preview it, and I have to say it is absolutely tremendous. It’s not a book that you read; it’s more a book that you study and learn from, and you could pick it back up and gain incredible amounts of information as you read through it. I’ve been pouring through the pages of the first book in the set, and the depth of information and your knowledge is just truly remarkable. I just want to start out by saying that it’s just fantastic.
DR. JOEL FUHRMAN: Oh, thanks so much. Well, it’s designed so it really can help people.
CRAIG PEPIN-DONAT: I think it’s going to do more than just help people; it’s actually going to save lives, truthfully, and we’re going to talk a lot about that. It’s really more than just a book, and it’s certainly not a diet book because I’ve read hundreds of diet books, and every time I read one I roll my eyes in the back of my head, because it’s just repeating a lot of the same information over and over again, or information that we’ve all heard before and that we’re recycling. This is really more of a lifestyle system that’s broken down into four specific phases. So I’d like to start out by giving an overview of what people can expect from your new book, Eat For Health, and to get into detail about how these four phases actually work.
DR. JOEL FUHRMAN: Absolutely. Clearly, I’m telling people that diets don’t work for lots of reasons. I give the exact reasons they can’t work, and that leads us to what really will work. What I’m saying is that because the American diet is so deficient in nutrients, that telling people to eat fewer calories is like telling them to breathe less oxygen. There’s no way they’re going to eat less calories. As a matter of fact, the low-nutrient diet is going to cause them to crave calories. It’s going to cause them to develop food addictions; it’s going to cause them to not be able to stop eating for a few hours because the lack of micronutrients in their diet leads to symptoms where we actually feel ill if we don’t constantly put food in our mouth all the time. Diets that restrict calories can’t possibly work; diets that change around the macronutrient intake don’t work. Macronutrients are the sweet, calorie-containing nutrients. Those are fats, carbohydrates, and proteins.
Diets of every type and every description flood the marketplace. You know, some say eat less fat, some say eat more fat, some say less carbohydrate, more carbohydrate, less protein, more protein. But, modifying, adjusting, and changing the ratio of one source of calories to the other is not going to have a major effect on enabling people to permanently and successfully change their diet; to get them to live as long as possible; and, to be slim and healthy forever.
CRAIG PEPIN-DONAT: Right.
DR. JOEL FUHRMAN: It’s not going to work because you haven’t solved the problem. The problem is that the diet that Americans are currently eating is significantly micronutrient-deficient. I show that micronutrient deficiencies create food cravings and overeating behaviors.
Albert Einstein once said that “we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking that we used when we created them.” People are counting calories and thinking they’re going to count calories and eat less food and exercise more. They’re going to eat a little less fat and eat more protein. It’s just never going to work because they’re going to “yo-yo” their way up and down. As you lose weight and gain weight and lose weight and gain weight, the up and down ocean of gaining and losing actually has a more negative effect on your health than when you haven’t even lost to begin with.
On the one hand, this is a book that tells people that they can lose weight successfully, perma-nently, and keep it off the rest of their life when they learn this different mindset. On the other hand, it’s not just a weight loss book; it is called Eat For Health. It’s not called, Eat To Lose Weight or Eat To Diet. It’s called Eat For Health. It’s not just for people who wanted to lose weight. It’s the same diet I eat or you eat. It’s the same diet we all should strive for, no matter what weight we are, because the emphasis of the book is that you don’t have to suffer with high blood pressure and high cholesterol. You don’t have to have a heart attack. Taking cholesterol-lowering drugs may decrease the risk of heart disease by 30%. But, I’m saying nutritional excel-lence can decrease the risk by 100%.
How much is that worth to you? Is that worth $100 to you, or is that worth $1000, or $100,000, or $1,000,000? What’s that worth to you? If I can guarantee you that you can’t have a heart attack, you can’t have a stroke, and you can’t get demented as you get older. You know? In other words, it’s saying to people that they are in control of their health. They don’t have to be sick; they can control their health destiny now. They can make the choice, and they can use nutritional excel-lence to remove headaches, to improve allergies and asthma, to get rid of or to improve their lupus conditions, to resolve psoriasis, to get rid of their diabetes. I’m saying don’t treat this, don’t control your diabetes; get rid of it, be non-diabetic. Get rid of your psoriasis, and get rid of your rheuma-toid arthritis. In other words, let’s give people the information that they need, so they can choose to eat a diet that’s healthful if they are ill and they have these diseases that are quintessentially caused by this disease-causing American diet.
CRAIG PEPIN-DONAT: It’s unfortunate that most people will not really adjust their lifestyle and get on a new path until they’re stricken with a disease or some sort of illness. That’s when the wake up call comes, you know. All of a sudden you have diabetes, or high blood pressure, or high cholesterol, or some other horrific disease or condition. Then, all of a sudden it’s medication and adjusting lifestyle choices. Now, why aren’t people waking up and making these changes for preventative means just to live better and healthier lives?
DR. JOEL FUHRMAN: Because they don’t have the right information. They haven’t been taught the right information. For example, 50% of all Americans die of heart attacks and strokes. You know, nobody has to have a heart attack and stroke. In the turn of the century, 100 years ago, less than 2% of the population had heart attacks and strokes.
CRAIG PEPIN-DONAT: Yes.
DR. JOEL FUHRMAN: This is crazy, but here’s the point. The point is that if you eat like other Americans do—and it’s normal to be overweight—there’s probably something wrong with you if you stay at a normal weight; some disease is likely causing you to be thin. It would be abnormal to be thin or underweight if you eat American food, because if you’re eating a diet so low in nutri-ents, the body is going to actually pick up your caloric drive. It’s going to tell you to eat more food. It’s normal to get heart disease and get cancer and develop dementia as you get older. It would be normal to live in pain and be physically disabled and to die in a hospital after aggressive, inva-sive, and futile medical care if you’re in a nursing home.
All these things are normal if you live in the typical style that most Americans live. Even autopsy studies done on people who died in car accidents show that 98% of all Americans have significant atherosclerosis by the age of 40. It’s not just some of us who develop heart disease. It’s not just some of us who develop high blood pressure. By the age of 60, more than 90% of all Americans are on medications for their heart or for high blood pressure. The point is that you can escape from the biological laws of cause and effect. But, if you eat the way other Americans do, you can develop the diseases that other Americans get. It’s as simple as that.
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Craig Pepin-Donat, founder of The Fit Advocate and author of The Big Fat Health and Fitness Lie, is an international fitness expert and an established authority in the fitness industry. A dynamic public speaker and educator, Craig has trained people in the fitness industry all over the world. He has created numerous professional training programs, seminars and workshops, based on his simple formula for success. His extensive experience and desire to help people by promoting the benefits of health and fitness transcends cultural and industry barriers. 
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