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INTRODUCTION

Why Turbo Metabolism, and What’s in It for Me?

If you can dream it, you can achieve it.

— ZIG ZIGLAR

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

— MARK TWAIN

Lights flashing and sirens blaring, the ambulance races toward the hospital. Inside the ambulance, Mary, a middle-aged woman, lies on a gurney, struggling with chest tightness, sweating, and dizziness.

Within an hour of her arrival at the hospital, Mary undergoes an angioplasty procedure: A wire is inserted into her occluded coronary artery, and then the artery is opened by inflating a small balloon inside. Finally, a “stent,” which resembles the small spring inside a ballpoint pen, is inserted in the proximal, left anterior descending (LAD) artery (one of the heart’s main arteries, a.k.a. the “widow-maker”), to prop it open permanently. Blood flow is restored to her heart. Several days later, she walks out of the hospital. The marvels of modern medicine have saved her life.

Though many catastrophic emergencies can now be treated with modern medical techniques, millions of people every year are still diagnosed with chronic diseases, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, and stroke. And these diseases seem to be striking people at a younger and younger age. What is the cause of this epidemic? Do we simply need to have more ambulances and high-tech life-saving procedures? Or is there a deeper reason for this widespread problem? Why is it that the United States spends more money than any other nation on health care, yet it has the fattest, sickest population of any country in the world? Are we ignoring the root causes of chronic disease and simply trying to fix the problem by throwing money at it?

As I have pondered these questions, I have realized that many of my own relatives are in the same predicament as Mary. Even though most of them appear lean, with skinny faces, arms, and legs, they have visible belly fat — prominent bulges in their midsections — fitting the proverbial definition of “thin outside, fat inside” or TOFI, as it is commonly known.

At the same time, in my practice, I have observed that with just a little weight loss — as little as 7 percent of one’s starting weight, or only ten, twenty, or thirty pounds for many people — my patients’ need for blood pressure or diabetes medication can be drastically reduced. Even their heart-related symptoms can improve. As this occurs, they have a lot more fun and freedom. They can say yes to life’s wonderful adventures more often and participate and engage in activities with their children and grandchildren.

I have often thought: Instead of treating a dangerous condition resulting from chronic disease, what if we implemented proven lifestyle changes before the disease reached the critical stage?

When I first started to scour the research, I found mentors in Dr. Joel Fuhrman and Dr. Neal Barnard, who were already working with thousands of people and helping them reverse chronic diseases and regain their vitality. Other really smart colleagues like Dr. Michael Roizen and Dr. Mladen Golubic were getting amazing results, while pushing for change at a policy level. I am immensely grateful to all of them for guiding the way and influencing my thinking about the reversibility of most chronic disease.

Thus, I started to experiment in using lifestyle optimization as the primary treatment for chronic disease. The results have been astounding. When we shift the focus to correcting the lifestyle factors that lead to disease, we are essentially treating the root cause. At that point, we can start thinking about prescription medications and procedures as a supplement to the first priority, which is treating the causes.

What are the five essential lifestyle ingredients that can reverse disease and add years and years to your life?

1. Impeccable nutrition: Eat enough highly nutritious foods that are not calorie dense. This maximizes nutritional content while minimizing empty calories. The food that we need provides fuel as well as information and intelligence from the environment, and it needs to be as nutritionally complete as possible. It needs to be satisfying and delicious because it is our most primal need. We need to be mindful of the toxins from the environment and to choose foods that minimize these toxins.

2. Optimal hormone balance: Eat the right foods and avoid hormonally dangerous ones (like dairy and alcohol). At the same time, make good lifestyle choices in terms of physical activity, stress management, meditation, and sleep habits to maintain optimal hormone balance.

3. Regular exercise: Move your body with joy and abandon as it is meant to be moved. Find enjoyable physical activities. Exercise also has benefits in terms of brain health — memory and mood — as well as heart health, metabolic, bone, and muscle health. Do you want to know the secret to Turbo Metabolism in three words? Activate big muscles.

4. Stress management and quality sleep: This combination is the foundation of a healthy lifestyle and the most critical emotional-resilience component of this book’s strategy. Toxic load can also be caused by unmanaged repeated and prolonged psychosocial stress and lack of sleep. We need to be mindful of the importance of avoiding toxicity in our physical, psychological, and social environment as well.

5. Social connections: Loving, supportive relationships; meaning and purpose in life; and involvement in family and community can make a huge difference in health and longevity. Meaningful social connections help build emotional resilience, which is a foundation for healthy eating and active living.

When you start to master these five factors — of which nutritional excellence is the most important, lean muscle mass is the key, and emotional resilience is the foundation — you can improve your quality of life, reverse disease, and enhance your health.

Recipe for Disaster

Our typical diet might be the modern-day equivalent of a Trojan horse. It’s as if an enemy wants to conquer us, and so they have encouraged our addiction to a diet of processed food loaded with sugar, fat, and salt and stripped of protective, natural disease-fighting superfoods (the “good stuff” found in plants that provides information and intelligence, not just calories). In this way, they are incapacitating a large proportion of our population with chronic disability and disease.

Currently, 70 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, and this number is projected to be even higher in the next decade, as childhood obesity, which has tripled in the last thirty years, continues to increase.¹ Over a hundred million Americans have diabetes or prediabetes, with increased risk of amputations, heart disease, and blindness.² This means almost half of our population either has “diabesity” (obesity with insulin resistance, prediabetes, or diabetes) or is getting there quickly.

This horrifying trend is also an urgent matter of economic viability and national security that should be part of the conversation on national policy right now. The United States has already lost its manufacturing base to China, and much of what we have left is the service industries. The 17 percent of our GDP (gross domestic product) that we spend on disease care is unsustainable.³

It is looking more and more probable that type 2 diabetes will become a global epidemic (with projections that one in three individuals worldwide will eventually be affected), as the rest of the world becomes more affluent, relinquishing their original diet of real food in favor of a more Westernized diet of processed junk mislabeled as food. Diabetes and metabolic diseases cost the United States over $245 billion a year, which exceeds the entire GDP of countries like Ireland, New Zealand, and Pakistan. Emerging economies like India now have 25 percent of the worldwide burden of metabolic diseases like diabetes and its accompanying curse of heart disease and strokes.

Right now, about 63 percent of US food intake is processed grains, and 25 percent is animal food, leaving a mere 12 percent for plant food — and half of this is processed plant food, like French fries, potato chips, and ketchup.⁴

Over 60 percent of our meals are prepared outside the home: When we let someone else take charge of our most vital interaction with the environment, we have no idea what we are being fed. Restaurant food is prepared to make it look and taste good, usually by adding lots of salt, sugar, and unhealthy fats.

Exacerbating the situation are the faulty US Department of Agriculture (USDA) one-size-fits-all, meat- and dairy-heavy nutrition models (such as the one listed at MyPlate.gov). These are less guides to a “balanced diet” than “broken plates.” The USDA’s primary job is to protect the interests of the agriculture industry, and these guidelines are fueled and funded by the dairy, beef, and grain lobbies. Certainly, this is well-intended advice, but the advice suffers from this inherent conflict of interest, and the unintended consequences have been disastrous.

The typical American eats “bit” foods — or “because it’s there” foods — all day long. Donuts, candy, and processed “treats” are ubiquitous. However, the reality is that these are not treats; they are as dangerous and addictive as street drugs. The processed-food industry has figured out the formula for creating products that directly stimulate the reward centers of the brain (just like cocaine and heroin); as a result, the industry ensures that “You can’t eat just one.” Sadly, they are dead right, yet these substances are completely legal and socially acceptable.

Here’s the bottom line: “Diabesity” (insulin resistance), prediabetes, type 2 diabetes, and obesity are human-made diseases. Some people may have been born with an increased genetic predisposition, but these conditions have manifested as a result of personal decisions — whether they were intentional or not. Genetics is like a loaded gun: It’s up to you to pull the trigger. You are holding the solution literally in your own hands right now.

Insulin resistance and unleashed inflammation are at the core of most of the diseases of Western civilization. Having just a few extra pounds of weight, especially on your belly, starts this process.

Find Your Reasons Why

When you change your mind-set, you can develop the motivation and ability to change your destiny. Something triggered you to pick up this book. When you buy in to the idea with your heart and soul and set up your environment for success, nothing can hold you back from living the life of your dreams.

Are you going to let anything stand in the way of awakening your inner “superhero” and living the best life you can, starting right now? Self-examination is the first step.

What is the purpose of your life on Earth? Close your eyes for a moment and think about it. What kind of person would you like to be? What would you like to have? What would you like to offer to the world? What would you like to do, see, experience, and accomplish with your time and energy? What does your ideal universe look like in terms of your own self, your relationships, and your finances? What does health have to do with it? Why are you even reading this book?

If your goal is to live with meaning, purpose, and joy; to spend time with loved ones and to make valuable contributions to the people in your community; to have more beautiful, meaningful, and enjoyable experiences; and to learn new things and grow and contribute, you will need to optimize your health so that you have the vitality you need for this journey.

Autonomy, freedom to choose, and the pursuit of happiness are fundamental to our existence as independent beings, and yet these basic rights can be snatched from us if we are not healthy. So the goal of optimizing our “health span” is also fundamental to our existence. The end result should be more “life in our years,” that is, a longer health span.

What would you be willing to give for an additional five, ten, or even fifteen years of vitality, productivity, fun, freedom, and enjoyment?

We have a culture of short-term fads and cycles: January to March is the time for making (and breaking!) New Year’s resolutions. April to June is the period for crash diets, for getting “ripped beach body abs and the perfect round tight booty” for the upcoming summer. July to September is the time for summer picnics and vacations with pizza, beer, and chips. October to December is the “holiday season” — watching football on TV and eating lots of beef, pork, turkey, pie, cookies, and cake, all washed down with alcoholic beverages wherever you go.

This book is not about the latest fad diet that might help you lose twenty-one pounds in twenty-one days. It is about changing your relationship with the environment. It’s about eliminating foods and habits that are making you weak and tired and replacing them with foods and activities that make you stronger. This includes optimizing food, water, and environmental exposures, as well as thought patterns. It’s not about deprivation or sacrifice. Rather, it’s about adopting an abundant new way of life that will give you the energy, vibrancy, and vitality that you deserve. It’s about living life to the fullest, to enjoy every adventure life has to offer without any limitation or handicap, to be able to keep up with your kids and grandkids, and to say yes to more adventures, fun, and freedom!

Nutritional excellence, an active lifestyle, and emotional resilience form the three legs of the stool on which your health rests.

So, go ahead and be greedy! Create the perfect world for yourself, as you strive for optimal health: Taking care of yourself is the most profound way in which you can make a positive impact on the world around you. As the novelist Richard Bach states in Illusions, “You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true.”⁵

How to Use This Book

This book follows my Turbo Metabolism program of diabetes and metabolic disease reversal, the same one I prescribe to my patients. The order of the chapters roughly corresponds to the way I present the material in my eight-week course, but it’s not necessary to follow the program in the chapter order. Under the counsel of their personal physicians, readers can adapt the advice in this book to create their own health-promoting, disease-reversing program, one that fits their particular needs. However you use this guide, the final goal is to get rid of the things that make us fat, hungry, tired, and depressed and to awaken the “superhero” within!

For help defining for yourself why you want to make the commitment to better health, please turn to appendix 2, “Ten Reasons Why I Want to Achieve Turbo Metabolism.”

RULES TO LIVE BY

• Fads won’t change your life. Neither will pizza, hamburgers, hot dogs, and beer.

• Your purpose in life is far more important than your next trip to the refrigerator.

• Don’t be satisfied with a recipe for disaster.

• Choose life. Invest in yourself.

• Nothing tastes as good as lean feels.

• There is nothing selfish about self-care.

Your Amazing Body

Your body is an amazing creation with an amazing ability to heal itself:

• Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 170 miles per hour.

• The human body is estimated to have sixty thousand miles of blood vessels.

• Scientists have counted over five hundred different liver functions.

• Your nose can remember fifty thousand different scents.

• You use two hundred muscles to take one step.

• Approximately fifty trillion cells make up the human body.

• Every day an adult body produces three hundred billion new cells, completely renewing itself every seven years.

• The surface area of your gut can equal the size of a tennis court.