1. A Nutritarian diet helps you lose weight easily and keep it off without being hungry

Are you tired of dieting with minimal results to show for it? I feel like I have been dieting my whole life, because, well, I have. That is, until now. Dieting doesn’t work because it asks you to eat less and doesn’t address getting adequate micronutrients – vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals.

Eating our SAD (Standard American Diet), as named by Dr. Fuhrman in “Eat to Live”, we are an extremely nutrient deficient society and most all diets ask you to still eat some version of the SAD, but just less of it. This means you are hungry and have cravings all the time because you never have satiety.

Satiety, or the feeling of fullness, is achieved by activating the stretch receptors and nutrient chemical receptors. So eating a large meal that has lots of micronutrients. If you are eating small portions and not enough fruits & vegetables, then you never achieve satiety and will have cravings all the time because of the lack of phytonutrients. Your body is trying to tell you something! It wants more nutrients!

It doesn’t matter if you are on a low-carb, high-carb, high-fat, or low-fat diet. None of these focus on getting enough micronutrients.

Also, diets that have you eat many meals a day, don’t work because your body doesn’t burn fat when it is digesting food. The hormones that burn fat for energy only work when you are NOT digesting food. So eating 3 large meals a day without snacking is much better than eating 5-6 meals a day because it allows your body to actually burn fat. Insulin helps to promote fat storage so the more often you eat, the more often insulin is turned on, and then your body is in a constant state of fat storage instead of fat burning.

Keto diets are dangerous. With such a high consumption of animal products AND putting your body into ketosis, you are putting your kidneys on overdrive because of all the nitrogenous wastes it is having to clean out of your body. The worst part is you won’t know you have damaged your kidneys or have symptoms until they are 90% gone – beyond repair. I don’t think dialysis and kidney transplants are worth the risk.

Maybe you lose a lot of weight, but did you improve your overall health? Being thin, but still having a high disease risk doesn’t seem like the best way to go.

Lastly, if you do some sort of diet what do you do if you lose the weight and finish the diet? You go back to eating some version of the SAD and gain it all back.

How about a diet that is a lifestyle change, that you will lose weight easily, not be hungry, keep off the weight, and IMPROVE your health. That is a Nutritarian lifestyle.

I find my food cravings have ceased. I’m no longer thinking about pizza, burgers, fries, popcorn, and candy. I don’t crave it. In the past, if I had a stressful day, I would crave these unhealthy foods. Not any more! I’m only on day 12 and I can honestly say I haven’t even thought about eating junk food. Not once. It just doesn’t have the control over me anymore like it used to.

What does a Nutritarian eat? “Eat to Live” by Dr. Fuhrman. He coined the term Nutritarian and his books go into all the research and science he has compiled over decades. He has thousands of success stories and they are so inspiring about what is possible on the nutritarian diet!

Related Reading: Eat More, Lose Weight, & Prevent Disease

3. A Nutritarian diet can protect you if you have a family history of cancer, heart disease, or dementia

The other lie that we have bought hook, line, and sinker is that all of these diseases are primarily genetic. If that is true, then why weren’t these diseases prevalent around 100 years ago? Why are we seeing such an explosion of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, autoimmune disorders, and dementia?

It is our diet.

We are what we eat.

There are populations on this earth that do NOT have the rate of man-made diseases that we have in America and they eat primarily a plant-based diet without processed foods. They eat very little, if any, meat (less than 5-10% of calories), and no processed foods. When those same people leave their home and start eating the SAD, they then develop the exact same diseases as Americans. This means it can’t be genetic; it must be diet-related.

My motivation for living a nutritarian life is because my father just passed from Alzheimer’s. He lost at least 10-15 years of potential life. His father, my grandfather, lived into his 90s. We are going in the wrong direction with each passing generation. I don’t want the same to happen to me and I know it can be prevented. I don’t want my kids to have to watch that happen to us.

The 2 killers are animal protein & processed foods. The American diet is centered around these 2 things and we get the opposite of these other healthy populations. The average American eats 90% meat, dairy, & processed foods and only 10% fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, and seeds. And of that 10%, it includes…..french fries as a “vegetable”. And we wonder why we are so sick and fat.

To prevent these diet-caused diseases, you need to be eating lots of green leafy vegetables, cruciferous vegetables (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, etc), non-green vegetables (eggplant, carrots, tomatoes, etc), onions, mushrooms, berries, bean, nuts, and seeds. All of these foods provide all the macronutrients you need – protein, fat, carbohydrates). These foods also provide over 10,000 micronutrients your immune system also requires. We have been so focused on some arbitrary ratio of macronutrients, but really we should be focused on micronutrients.

Only 10% or less of calories should be meat or dairy. That’s about 1-2 servings a week or 1-2 ounces a day depending on if you are man or woman. 1500 calories a day would be about 150 calories or less of meat or dairy a day. Processed foods should rarely be consumed.

Most of these micronutrients haven’t even been discovered yet and taking a multi-vitamin doesn’t even come close. These micronutrients help regulate your hormones so you can lose weight, feed the good bacteria in your gut, clean out your arteries, strengthen your immune system, improve your mood, and so much more!

4. A Nutritarian diet gives you more energy & gets rid of brain fog

Imagine feeling great, looking great, and having a ton of energy with no brain fog. That is the guarantee of a Nutritarian lifestyle.

The great side effect of eating nutritarian is not just weight loss and preventing disease, but being able to think more clearly! The brain fog starts lifting and you start feeling more alive! You don’t even realize you are experiencing brain fog or depression sometimes, until you come out of it. It’s like a veil being lifted you didn’t know was there.

I already can think so much clearer and am not forgetting things like I was. Imagine the concern becoming more forgetful, when my father just passed from Alzheimer’s….

When you are filling your body with thousands of nutrients on a daily basis (which you can’t get from a pill), you very quickly start to have more energy. My workouts are so much easier and I can run for so much longer.

Depression has been on the rise in the past decades and I think this is mostly diet and nutrition related as well. We are the most overfed and undernourished in our history, so it makes sense that mental illness would be on the rise. Depression, can be greatly improved by eating a high nutrient diet.

Phytonutrients only come from plants and are not optional for health. They are required.

Related Reading: See what I ate the first week of my Nutritarian diet!

5. A Nutritarian Diet helps you live as long as possible

What diet would help you lose weight, feel great, prevent disease, and live into your 90s or 100s? The nutritarian diet. For the strongest immune system, you have to have all the phytonutrients it needs and the only way to get them is by eating mainly fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, and seeds. Eat the rainbow every day!

There is no prescription drug or magic pill that you can take to extend your life. But fruits and vegetables are literally, the fountain of youth and can make you look, feel, and BE younger on the inside.

The populations in the world with the most centenarians eat mostly plant-based diets.

Studies have shown that vegans & vegetarians live longer than their meat eating counterparts. However, you can still be an unhealthy vegan or vegetarian, if you consume too much processed foods or dairy. Sugar, oil, high sodium, preservatives, dyes, artificial flavors, white bread, white pasta, high fructose corn syrup, dairy, should all be avoided.

If you want to live the longest, then you have to eat a mostly plant-based diet with no processed foods.

This includes olive oil. Olive oil is NOT a healthy food. It is a processed food and is pure fat just like any other oil and does not promote health. It may be a healthier version than canola or vegetable oil, but that doesn’t mean it is healthy. That’s like saying 1 pack of cigarettes a day is healthy if you used to smoke 2 packs a day. All the studies about olive oil are only comparing its usage to other oils or butter, NOT to those who don’t use any oil at all.

It doesn’t matter when you start a nutritarian diet, you can reap the benefits. It is best to start it as soon as possible since what you eat when you are young can affect your health in the future. But studies have shown that even when people started eating a plant-based diet later in life, they still had a major reduction in the risks of cancer and heart disease.

We have such an awesome opportunity unlike any other time in history. We have access to so many vegetables and fruits from all over the world if we just understood how powerful they are. They are the superfoods that create super immunity and can literally save your life.

A hundred years ago we ate much smaller amounts of meat and dairy and a lot more fruits & vegetables. The explosion of processed foods, meat, and cheese consumption has overtaken our diet and corrupted our future.

6. A Nutritarian Diet will save you money

Eating healthy fruits and vegetables is not expensive. That is a myth. Meat, cheese, and endless processed food is expensive. A can of beans and frozen vegetables is not. Plus eating “cheap” fast food and processed food is costing you more than what you pay for it at the time.

Being sick is expensive and is costing our society billions in medical costs and lost wages. Do you already take prescription drugs to manage a disease? Do you get several colds a year or have chronic allergies? Imagine not having to pay for all those prescriptions, doctors, or hospital visits. You can only expect to pay more and more every year for medical costs and prescription drugs if you continue eat the SAD.

Think about all the money you can save and dangerous side effects you can avoid by just eating a diet that protects you instead of hurts you! Wouldn’t you rather use all that money for fun stuff like traveling the world or paying for your kid’s college?!

Health care wouldn’t be so much of an issue in our country if we weren’t all sick all the time. The health insurance industry keeps raising premiums because we keep getting sicker. If we got rid of all these man-made diseases, then health insurance costs would go down dramatically for everyone. The health of our country does affect our collective bottom line, even if you yourself are healthy.

Not only the cost of health insurance and out-of-pocket expenses, but also the cost of lost wages. What will you do if you can’t work because you have cancer or heart attack? If you are sick all the time and have to miss weeks of unpaid work because of diabetes complications? And if you aren’t working, then how do you pay for that necessary medical care and your living costs? Disability insurance never covers you at 100%. So many people have to declare bankruptcy because of a a major preventable disease.

Nutritarians eat for health

Nutritarians are healthier, live longer, and are their ideal weight without dieting. This lifestyle focuses on eating lots of healthy foods instead of restricting anything. This is a complete shift from a dieting mentality, which means if you have a slip up, you just go right back to eating healthy without beating yourself up. You don’t count calories, you don’t weigh portions, you don’t put your body in ketosis, you don’t eat smaller portions, you don’t starve yourself. You eat larger meals, less calories, and thousands more micronutrients so you start to feel so much better & lose weight quickly. You are eating for health.