Excepts from the Younger You Diet
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Excerpt from Introduction
The fact is, as early as age 30 our bodies begin to age, inside and out. At first the changes are almost imperceptible. You may recognize you're aging when you see your first gray hairs, or find it harder to remember a phone number. But these issues don't signal the beginning of aging: by the time they happen, you're already well into the process. The same holds true for the more traditional signs of aging, including arthritis, osteoporosis, heart disease, high blood pressure, loss of skin tone, and even back pain. Once you've experienced the problems, your body has already become old.
You may have also noticed losing weight has become more difficult compared to when you were younger. This is true for everyone, even your skinniest friends. And it isn't because you've changed, and now you're eating too much and exercising too little. In fact, many of us are eating less and exercising more than ever before. What this does mean is that the standard medical intervention to "modify our lifestyle" doesn't work once we begin aging, and even when it does, the weight loss you'll achieve is incredibly hard to sustain.
Aging is inevitable, but weight gain and aging don't have to go hand in hand. We don't have to live inside an aging body. We can make easy yet significant and effective changes that will literally turn back the clock and reverse the aging process.
By following this new program, you will be able to lose the weight you want and keep it off forever. And you'll do this by eating lots of healthy, delicious foods. Not only will you get thinner, you'll look and feel younger.
When brain functioning slows, weight gain occurs. When brain function worsens, weight gain increases even more, leading to further loss of brain function. This is the vicious cycle of excess weight. However, I know any brain chemical imbalance is completely reversible once you learn how to address your health head-first.
The Promise of A Younger, Slimmer You
THE YOUNGER YOU DIET will teach you how to compensate for your genetic predisposition to gain weight by showing easy ways for you to change your brain chemistry, literally enhancing your brain to function better on every level. You will be following a personalized exercise program that will not only tone your body, but again boost your brain's metabolism while addressing your specific health concerns. Once you change your brain chemistry, you will be able to completely shut off your cravings and addictions to certain foods. At the same time, you will be reversing the aging process so you can keep your brain and your body younger and more energetic, so you will have the physical intensity and mental focus to
lose weight.
If we begin today to get our weight under control, we can protect our brain and body from age-related degeneration. Losing weight actually helps keep the brain and body younger. Our goal is a long, perpetually young life: to be Forever Young. But the only way to reach this point is by intensely generating brain electricity, which will help you become and stay thinner. There is a brain-body connection. Your brain and body must stay fit together. An unfit body is connected to a highway called your neck, which links it to an equally unfit brain. This is the single most important truth of dieting: you need to fix your brain as well as your body.
The Deep Connection between Enhancing Brain Chemistry and Food
The Younger You Diet offers the ability to recondition your brain largely through the foods you'll eat. Every natural food (meaning, foods that are not manufactured) is a precursor to one of the brain chemicals. These foods include lean proteins (meats, fish, poultry, and dairy products), complex carbohydrates (fruits, vegetables, beans, and whole grains), and even fats. They are providing your brain with more power, more speed, more balance, or more rest with every bite, depending on the foods you choose. However, you need to enhance all of your brain chemicals to get to optimum brain functioning, which is why foods from each of these groups are included in this diet. There are hundreds of foods for you to choose from, so you'll have lots of options for every meal and increase your ability to stick with this eating plan. At the same time, rotating your foods will feed your brain more nutrients.
You will be following a high protein, low fat, low carbohydrate diet, which has been clinically proven to be the best prescription for battling excess weight. It also is proven to be the healthiest diet for body functioning, because these foods are loaded with important vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants which all affect your health for the better. Best of all, you are making the necessary connection between a healthy body and a healthy brain: a better working brain will free you from food addictions, provide you with a stronger metabolism, and ultimately lead to a thinner body.
Teas and Spices Make Dieting More Successful
My secret weapon is the incorporation of a wide variety of teas and spices with every meal. Not only will they make your food taste better, they'll be improving your health. Teas and spices have thermogenic properties: they actually boost your metabolism so you can burn more of the calories you consume. They are also nutrient dense foods that contain important vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and anti-bacterial factors to help maintain health. They can stimulate digestion, cleanse the body and give you lots of energy, which are all necessary treatments for every aging part of your body, including your brain.
The Science Behind the Younger You Diet
Your brain chemical activity is determining which foods you are compelled to eat, the speed of your metabolism, and your ability to stop eating and recognize when you are full. Restoring or enhancing your dopamine, acetylcholine, GABA, or serotonin, or any combination of them, is the only way you will be able to lose weight effectively and keep it off permanently. Luckily, we have the technology to easily determine which brain chemicals you are deficient in, or are not producing efficiently.
Computers have been integral in helping us unlock the mysteries of the brain. Based on the findings of brain imagery, we can confidently say the brain controls your carb binging, salt binging, sugar binging, and late night binging. These issues aren't caused from problems with digestion (stomach), or cardiovascular health (heart), or a polluted body filled with toxins (liver).
My private medical practice is called PATH Medical-the Place for Achieving Total Health. I like to think of it as Eastern philosophy meeting Western technology. At PATH, we make a definitive diagnosis by starting with a thorough examination of the brain. We consider the whole body when formulating a treatment plan. We use every proven conventional and alternative treatment protocol. I'm proud to say that my PATH Medical office is considered one of the foremost practices in Integrative Medicine-the combination of conventional, alternative and holistic therapies recognized as the new medical paradigm for the 21st century.
In my office, I can accurately map the brain, and show my patients their production and quantity of brain chemicals, through the use of a brain electrical activity mapping system known as BEAM™. First developed by researchers at Harvard Medical School in the 1980s, this computer-based technique measures the brain's electrical activity. BEAM technology and research is at the forefront of medical science. Without it, we would not have the data to conclude that obesity is a brain chemical disorder. Because of BEAM, I was able to create the Younger You plan that finally treats excess weight and obesity correctly.
The Younger You Diet
The Younger You Diet allows you to choose from a wide variety of fresh foods, herbs, spices and teas that will actually help you lose weight and keep those pounds from coming back. These foods have been specially chosen to create long-lasting satiety so you won't feel hungry. They also promote excellent brain chemistry, so you will have an increased sense of well-being and high energy. Many have dopamine-boosting properties, so they increase your metabolism and curb your cravings. High acetylcholine foods reduce your need for "bad" fats. High GABA foods alleviate stress and enable you to have better portion control. High serotonin foods allow you to get the rest you need to recharge your brain and body.
The Younger You Diet offers hundreds of choices: complex carbohydrates that include lots of fruits and vegetables, as well as lean meats, healthy fats, wonderful herbs and spices that are chock full of thermogenic nutrients including antioxidants, and soothing, healing teas. These choices are considered "high volume": you can eat lots of them and feel full because they take up space in your stomach, yet they are still low in calories. This way of eating is referred to by physicians as a "volumetric diet." Basically you can eat more of them and still lose weight because the nutrient-to-calorie ratio is the highest of any diet around.
The secret to choosing healthy foods is the opposite method of eating bagels and doughnuts: you want every square inch of your food to be packed with nutrients. Volumetric foods are abundant in vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and phytochemicals and are rich in fiber to aid in digestion. This way of eating has been proven over and over to improve the way you use and burn your food, which means not only will you lose weight, but these foods support an anti-aging strategy to get you feeling healthier and younger. The goal of the Younger You Diet is to get as many as nine servings daily-between four and five cups-of fruit and vegetables. That's what makes the Younger You Diet volumetric: the majority of your foods will be fruits, vegetables, spices, herbs and teas.
Don't Worry About Caloric Restriction
A satisfying meal comes from the amount of food you eat, and not because of the number of calories or the grams of fat, protein or carbs it contains. Remember, I'm not focusing on those numbers and neither should you. Instead, the trick of the Younger You Diet is to fill up on foods that aren't full of calories.
Yet in order for you to experience weight loss, you need to create a calorie deficit: to teach your body to burn more calories than you take in. My super foods, herbs, spices and teas do this job so well you don't have to count calories. And because you will be exercising regularly, you will need lots of calories to support your energy needs. Your metabolism will be working better due to the foods you choose and the exercise program you follow, so you can eat more and still lose weight.
Remember, you are first rebalancing your brain through nutrients, which will then lead to weight loss. These two goals can work against each other. You may need more calories to get your brain back to full functioning. But when you do, you'll see the pounds melt off as well as feeling energized, younger and healthier.
By adding significant quantities of herbs and spices to your foods, you're also adding tons of antioxidants, minerals and multivitamins to every meal, and gaining tremendous blood sugar benefits. Whenever you add these spices to your food, you're increasing the nutrient density of your food.
Spices are thermogenic, which means they naturally increase your metabolism and enhance brain chemistry. Spices also increase your overall feeling of fullness, so that you eat less. One study conducted at Maastricht University in the Netherlands showed that when healthy subjects consumed an appetizer with 0.9g of red pepper before each meal, it decreased their caloric intake by 10-16 percent. And spicy foods force you to drink more water, which is another Younger You key to weight loss.
On the Younger You Diet you will be adding at least three metabolism boosting spices to every meal. If you use the recipes and meal plans we provide, the spices have been added in for you. Remember to be more liberal with your spices than the usual pinch or sprinkle recommended in most recipes. Larger amounts of spices are critical to getting the most benefits. For example, use as much as a tablespoon of cinnamon sprinkled over a baked sweet potato. Some of my favorite spices include coriander, basil, sage; I use cinnamon and nutmeg in coffee; two teaspoons of cinnamon in plain yogurt. I sprinkle black sesame seeds, paprika, and fresh ground pepper over salmon with beets and sliced carrots, and whole wheat couscous. I use the same spice mixture with balsamic vinegar and olive oil on sliced chicken breast.
Your stomach needs to be able to tolerate higher amounts of spices, so experiment, adding a bit at a time. Start by adding half a teaspoon until you're sure what you can handle. Don't use a tablespoon of cayenne or chili or paprika if you're sensitive to spicy foods.
