Nourish Your Food and Your Heart

Let’s talk about diet. I actually hate that word – diet. I hate it because a diet implies that you’re going on a thing that is going to change you or make you lose weight or do something to you. I don’t want that. I want us to be on a nourishment plan, a dietary journey that is going to actually nourish our souls and allow us to live from the heart. 

A Balanced Heart Is A Healthy Heart

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Dieting is crazy (and always changing)

It actually depends on the day. I remember at one point on Monday, eggs were good. By Friday, you weren’t supposed to eat them. It’s always swinging back and forth. The recommendations are so incredibly confusing for everybody. I remember in the eighties, it was one of my favorite periods because there was Jane Fonda exercising, and we were all thinking we were super healthy by eating carbohydrates. It was the carbohydrate craze, and what happened was everyone was eating carbs and low fats. 

So when we did that, we started really becoming obese as a country. I mean, that was the shift. It was the high carb, low fat craze. So everyone started eating sugars and carbs, and we started getting fatter and fatter and fatter and fatter, and then hit the nineties. And what happened? 

From All Carbs to No Carbs

Everyone was eating fats and no carbs, so it was a low carb, high fat diet. Well, the high carbohydrate people, they stayed a little heavier and eventually they lost weight, but they actually didn’t stay on that diet because they couldn’t sustain a low fat diet. And the high fat people, they couldn’t sustain it either. You know what happened? 

Nobody stayed on the diet. Here’s the problem. If you can’t stay on a diet, it is definitely not going to work. There was another trial that came out called the Lion Heart Study. 

It was the most impressive thing I had ever seen in my entire life when it looked at diets. There was a 70% reduction in cardiovascular disease on this one diet, the Mediterranean diet.  This diet is high in olive oil, nuts, multi-grains and vegetables and fruits. The Mediterranean diet  is also really low fat, but high in good fats. Omega fatty acids that increase the good cholesterol and decrease the bad cholesterol, an essential nutrient that is part of a heart healthy diet. This diet was repeatedly tested and shown to decrease the incidence of heart disease by as much as 30%. So now for all of my patients in general, I say the Mediterranean diet is probably the best way to go. Include fats that are good for you, not the saturated fats, not the fats that come from animals. I always say two eyes, two to four legs and a mother, don’t eat that. 

But if you have things like fish and good fats, omega- 3’s from things like flaxseed oil and olive oil and avocados, that’s a great place to get it. And don’t worry about complex carbohydrates. Eat them and vegetables as much as you want. Think about being in Italy, the beaches of Greece – that’s the kind of food that you want to eat when you start thinking about fats. 

Sugars

Part of what is driving obesity and diabetes in this country are the sugars. The fact that at some point “supersizing” everything became a really good thing to do. That sugar sweetened beverage was just a given. When you went into certain restaurants, it wasn’t like, would you like water? It was, what kind of soda are you drinking? Let’s face it, the sugars that you consume through beverages like soda or even juices  are not good for us and can actually add on pounds and weight and increase sugars that lead to diabetes. So stay away from it. 

For women, the recommendation is six teaspoons of sugar a day. That’s 24 grams and that’s it. Now, if you start looking at prepared foods, salad, dressings, sauces, and breads, you’re going to see that hidden in many of these is a good amount of sugar. So be very, very careful. We all have our own unique metabolism. We all have our own unique genetics. We can actually figure out a personalized, unique dietary program for you based on how you metabolize fats, how you metabolize sugars, and what your genetic makeup is. 

Should You Try This Diet?

I get these calls often, “Hey, I heard of this diet. I heard of that diet.” “What do you think of this? What do you think of that?”  Just pause. Food is meant to nourish you, to nurture your soul. The whole foods, the things that come from the ground and from the trees that do not have processed things in them is the best way to eat. When you try to figure out what your nourishment plan should be, it’s really about what is going to make you live from the heart.

It’s about what makes you feel the best you can. It’s not about having that donut in the morning because by three o’clock you’re going to have a sugar crash. It’s not about having to have that ice cream every night. I promise you, when you give it up, you’re not going to die. It’s about finding out how to be as healthy, as vital, and as fit as you can. 

I know you can do it. You don’t have to change your life. You don’t have to be miserable. You just have to live from the heart. And the time to do it is not tomorrow, not next week, not next month, because the longer you think about it, the less you’re going to do it. 

The time to do it is now. Adesso, Adesso, Adesso.

Take one small step of heartcare today. Click here to visit our fun, little quiz that will tell you if your heart is in balance. Post that or something like it where you’ll see it: On your mirror, on your laptop, on your social media?! (and yes, please tag us so we can celebrate the start of your heartcare journey).