Conquer Food Cravings For Heart Health

Joel Fuhrman, MD

Nutritional Research Foundation.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Nutritional Research Foundation.

Joel Fuhrman, MD

nutritionalresearch.org

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Okay, nutritionalresearch.org. Everybody write that down right now because you’ll want to just drink up all the resources that Dr. Fuhrman has created in his over 30 years showing us how it’s possible to achieve sustainable weight loss, reverse heart disease, diabetes, and other illnesses using smart nutrition that he terms The Nutritarian Diet. Seven-time New York Times best-selling author, and board-certified family physician. 

Be sure to check out the book, Eat for Life, an amazing book. It’s in my office just a few feet from me. And The End of Heart Disease, what a perfectly titled book for this summit. So thank you for being here. Thank you for raising all those tens and tens of millions of dollars for PBS over the years with your shows that have helped so many. Are you ready to go?

Joel Fuhrman, MD

I’m all set to go and excited as ever.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Well, let’s talk about beating food addiction. What makes food so addicting? What are the features that you have researched?

Joel Fuhrman, MD

Well, you know, it’s so important to talk about this, too. I just got to say that because a lot of people learn about healthy eating, but they can’t do it. They say, oh, great, this is great information, but I just can’t give up that food and I just can’t seem to get away from it. I’m driven to eat unhealthily and they lose some weight and they gain it back again. They just don’t get it. They can’t get it. They can’t get it to work. So, in order to get this to work, I wanted to be asked about the topic of food addiction. I want you and I to discuss this because people have to know all these factors that are inhibiting their ability to comply with a healthy diet. And we’re talking first about what makes something addicting and why people can’t control the amount of calories they eat or the food they choose to eat. So, why do these foods become addicting? And I doubt that’s, you know, a topic we can do a whole summit on with like 20 hours but we’re going to go through some highlights here. 

The first concept I want people to understand, the very first concept is the concept of caloric rush. Caloric rush means that if you were out there in the jungles or the forests, you were eating natural foods, and you wouldn’t put that many calories in the bloodstream at one time because you ate some artichokes, wild artichokes, wild strawberries, or wild pine nuts the calories would be absorbed slowly over hours and you wouldn’t be able to sit down and eat a meal of a thousand calories. You’d be collecting food and you put a few hundred calories into the blood. We can but the human stomach only holds a liter of food. If you put in natural foods like, you know, onions and mushrooms and nuts and beans and vegetables, you can’t fit more than like 300 to 500 calories in there, depending on the individual, let’s say 400 calories in the stomach. But if I give you oil at 120 calories of tablespoon you can have five tablespoons of oil and put 600, 700 calories in there right away in your stomach. 

You can put cheese or flour products. You could put or you could put 3000 to 4000 calories in your stomach at one time. But the point I’m making here is that when you eat oil, it enters the bloodstream very rapidly because the fat is not bound to fiber. When you eat nuts and seeds, the fat calories are bound to fibrous substances like sterols and stanols. And the fat calories go into the bloodstream very slowly over a period of 3 to 4 hours. And your body, cause the calories are going to the bloodstream slowly the body can preferentially burn them for energy and not store them as fat. But when you eat oil, the walnut oil, the sesame oil, the olive oil, the calories come in all at once within five minutes. And when you flood the body with 200 or 300 calories of fat all at once the body’s going to turn on fat storage mechanisms and store it as fat immediately. You can’t maintain the calories in the blood and burn it off over hours. It’s not going to work that way. When you put a rush of calories in the blood your body stores it as fats. 

But the spike of calories in the blood also affects the brain negatively. The high spike of calories in the blood that you can only achieve with processed foods for all the millions of years primates and humans have been on the planet. There was never any oil consumption or even any salt consumption until the recent last couple of thousand years. We’re talking about, you know, most of the time humans were on the planet they didn’t have salt, they didn’t have the oils in that processed foods. They didn’t even have farming. They just ate what they found in the jungles and the forests. But here’s what I’m saying, these processed foods, oils, sugars, and white flour products can push a lot like we know the word glycemic load from refined carbohydrates, like honey and maple syrup, and white flour products like commercial baked goods and sweeteners. They shoot to the bloodstream and the glycemic load goes up. Even white rice shoots the glucose in the blood high and oils shoot the fat in the blood high and those shooting up of unnatural never before obtainable in human history on the human body. 

The spike of calories in the blood acts on the sensors in the brain, the addictive sensors in the brain making you become dopamine insensitive and you become dependent on excessive calories in the blood for more brain stimulation because your brain now feels empty and you feel wasted and empty and almost agitated if you don’t keep going after this caloric rush. It’s the chronic exposure to the caloric rush from early childhood that gradually trains the human animal to only feel comfortable unless they overeat calories now because they have acclimated to it. It’s just like we see with salt. There’s a natural distaste for salt in human children and infants. If we overwhelm that with time we develop and we get over that resistance and now people get addicted to it and they think food tastes flat unless they took the salt. We had to work hard to get that animal, that human animal, to even like salt, and then they can’t stop it. And we got that human animal to like these concentrated carbohydrates and concentrated cow fat calories. And the fat calories, the concentrated fat calories I’m talking about are oils and animal fats. 

In the Nutritarian Diet, we get our fats from nuts and seeds. Those don’t cause a caloric rush. They go into the bloodstream very slowly. So we’re talking about one aspect of addiction but addiction has 10 different faces. That’s just one of the aspects is the caloric rush. The second aspect has to do with the withdrawal from toxic substances. Because well, because the body that’s not eating sufficiently high antioxidant, high phytochemical foods, high antioxidant, high anti phytochemical foods are fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, onions, mushrooms, and natural plants. They’re high in fat or protective chemicals. When we don’t eat phytochemicals, we build up reactive oxygen species like free radicals. We build up these free radicals, they’re toxic especially when they get excessive and we build up advanced applications and products and we build up ammonia and lipo, fusion, and other toxins in the body. We get exogenous waste from the junk food we eat too, and our bodies become toxic. 

And now when people finish digesting the last meal and they go into that catabolic phase where they’re no longer digesting the body transitions into a heightened phase of detoxification or self-healing or self-cleaning. When you’re not eating healthy food, the symptoms of detox, the symptoms of self-cleaning are overwhelmingly uncomfortable because now people feel anxiety, anger, irritability, headaches, and fatigue as the body is circulating more metabolic waste products. And those symptoms, those uncomfortable symptoms of detoxification are relieved by eating. So now people have to eat their withdrawal. You can eat to get them to go away. And the more unhealthy you eat the more they go away. And the more excessive you eat the more that you feel less fatigued. So you have to overeat to feel okay when your diet is not healthy. Just like when you’re drinking 10 cups of coffee a day and you stop drinking coffee and you go through caffeine withdrawal headaches. You can feel better by having more coffee, having more caffeine, or by eating more food because it doesn’t stop the body from withdrawing, from detoxing. 

Or if you’re coming off cocaine or alcohol or you’re coming off any kind of addictive substance. When you stop taking in the poison you feel poorly and you feel better when you put the poison back in the body again, it stops the symptoms. So people are on a poisonous diet and they feel ill when they stop eating it. And they have to keep putting the poison back in. So they have to overeat to feel okay. They have to eat too much and too often, and they even have to eat the wrong foods to feel okay because a piece of lettuce or a piece of broccoli is not going to do it for them. They have to have something with more caloric richness so they can stop the detox. Now, people cannot lose weight. They cannot reverse heart disease unless they stick to healthy eating long term. They have to take the initiative but then they have to repeat the right behavior for months or even a year. They got to keep on the right path for a year and they’ve got to understand this concept of detox because if they feel good, they’re going to start out and the first week they’re going to say, I feel worse. 

I felt better when I was eating junk food because they were going to feel fatigued, headachy, and shaky. And they have to understand the concept that we don’t eat for energy, we’re not eating to get rid of fatigue. We have plenty of fat in our body. We eat to get nourishment and we eat when we’re hungry. And true hunger is felt right here in your throat, lower part of your throat, and upper part of your chest. It’s not a headache and stomach cramping. It’s not fatigue. But people who are eating unhealthily they have disconnected their instinctual appetite and appetite drivers, they’re eating to stop withdrawal from their bad diet. So they’re eating, they’re using food as a drug and they’re their food addicts. And I’m making this radical statement. I’m saying almost all Americans are food addicts and diets don’t work. Diets of all descriptions don’t work long term, and they don’t work long term because people can’t, they’re not comfortable eating the right amount of calories. and a new territory. 

The Nutritarian Diet is such a critical element here to allow you to have success. And here’s why it’s the critical element because if you don’t eat so healthily you’re not going to feel comfortable with the right amount of calories. Eating so healthily makes it so you can choose to eat the right amount of calories and not feel uncomfortable eating the right amount of calories. The biological desire to overeat calories is too strong if you don’t eat enough healthy food and you’re not going to fight your biology because you’re addicted drive to overeat is going to be too powerful. So you have to learn how to eat the right foods as a means of diminishing your desire for excess calories.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Okay. That was powerful. Now, there is some of that where you just described the caloric rush concept. It was new to me and I think very informative. But the other term I’ve heard you lecture about is toxicosis, the relationship between toxicosis and overeating. And I think that’s what you were referring to without using that term, is that correct?

Joel Fuhrman, MD

That’s correct. I use those terms that you, that toxicosis is a cause of cancer and aging heart disease, and it causes people’s desire to overeat. When you eat poorly and you have a bad build-up of metabolic toxins, you cannot satisfy the right amount of calories. So you have to eat a clean diet. You have to get the toxins out of your body, and then you’ll be more connected with the amount of calories you eat. Now, eating a Nutritarian Diet doesn’t guarantee a person’s not going to overeat. They can still eat for emotional reasons or psychological reasons. They could be recreationally eating or stress eating but it gives them the potential to eat the right amount of calories without doing the right kind of diet. There’s almost no potential to be comfortable with the right amount of calories they’re destined for failure.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Well, all right. Well, we are conversing on the topic of beating food addiction, and there’s nobody better to share that with the audience of Reversing Heart Disease Naturally Summit and Joel Fuhrman, M.D. So we are appreciative of his time for those that are in the general audience. I think you guys got a lot out of this and a lot of understanding perhaps your own food addictions, your own reaction to a caloric rush and your own relationship to toxicosis, and how you want to detoxify your diet and stick to the Nutritarian approach that you can read more about in Dr. Fuhrman’s books. We’re going to come back in a couple of minutes for premium members, and we’re just going to go a little deeper on the topic of peer pressure with Dr. Fuhrman and for the rest of you. Thank you so much. We’ll see you in other parts of the summit. All right, Dr. Fuhrman, we’ve been talking about beating food addiction and you went over some great information for the general audience that everybody benefited from including me, a lot of it was new to me. But still, people are stuck. People are trapped in what they appears to be an endless food addiction cycle. Why do people experience peer pressure to eat badly and not be able to overcome that peer pressure?

Joel Fuhrman, MD

That’s a great question because that’s what people you know, we see that even people that become educated and they learn about healthy eating and the power of this diet style that we’re recommending to reverse disease. They can’t do it and when they go back to eating unhealthy again. And when you try to interview those people like I have over the last 40 years and try to decipher the reasons they didn’t take care of their health and they gain weight again, it’s because they in their so home social environment, their chronic exposure to other people put pressure on them where they don’t feel they can socialize or interact or please other people. And they feel that they’re socially isolated and lonely if they eat this way. So that interferes with their ability to comply with the diet. So it’s very, there’s a critical part of the program here is that we’ve socialized in America to build our self-esteem from having other people approve of us be going to looking better, you know, going to a better college, driving, having a fancier car dressing, fancy, whatever it is you’re into taking pictures on Instagram or Facebook and people approve of you. 

You’re trying to impress and improve other people and that’s like eating junk food. It doesn’t lead to long-term happiness and peacefulness and a sense of well-being and your to yourself that’s called externally generated self-esteem. And when your body, and when your self-esteem is dependent on how other people think of you and how you’re trying to please them and make yourself look good, you’re not going to succeed in being different to be different, and to take care of your health and to eat right, you’ve got to be a leader, not a follower. Then you have to develop internally generated self-esteem, internally generated self-esteem, when you not depending on externally generated means that you’re concerned when people could say something to you that could be an insult or you know, you’re not trying to have a comeback and make yourself look good, you’re pausing and saying this is really not about my ego. This is about how I can be useful to this person. This is an opportunity for you to have goodwill for another person so instead of trying to argue with them or protect your ego, you’re thinking about having creative goodwill for them and showing that you care about them in some way. 

And then what kind of information or how could you speak to them in a way that has the possibility of them having a better life? The possibility, you don’t have to succeed in that possibility, but your intent has to be the intent to help them. Then we build up internally and generate self-esteem. We take our ego out of it. We’re not hurt by people’s insults or how they look at us but we look at our interaction with other people around us as every interaction is an opportunity to have a beneficial effect on people around us. We see the world in a different way. We’re appreciative of the outside world, of the sunset, of the clouds, of nature, of the trees, of the bok choy, of the persimmon I have on my counter behind. And we appreciate the natural food and what nature makes. And we’re appreciative of the living creatures in the world, including other humans, and how we can be of use to them. And that meshes with being a role model and wanting to demonstrate consistency and with the way you eat and walk, the way you talk. 

In other words, you have to show, you have to demonstrate. You’re you’re doing the program because you become a role model and you become a success model. You’re like a lighthouse with rays of light affecting other people positively and when we study the people who succeeded long term with dropping 50 pounds, 80 pounds, and 100 pounds, and keeping it off for a decade or more, all these people have felt that they’ve their own transformation has benefited their community around them, their family, their friends and it’s using your own health to benefit others is what makes this which aids you in being able to be compliant with being different from others as you’re trying to take better care of your health. So draw the line in the sand. Don’t let you play around with self-destructive foods to please other people. You don’t have to look good in their eyes because when you do that you’ve removed your opportunity to have a good effect on them. We’re not pressuring you to have a good effect on them, but you have no up and no chance of having a positive effect unless you are an example of good health and consistency. See in your thoughts and your behaviors. So good luck to you. You can do this and this is going to be exciting for your health and your future.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

All right. Well, thank you so much, everybody at the Reversing Heart Disease Naturally Summit is appreciative for this basically, world-class mini-symposium on beating food addiction. And I think you’ve given people both education and tools to be successful at this and be sure to grab onto Dr. Fuhrman’s books we talked about and certainly read End of Heart Disease. A book I absolutely love and feature in my Heart Disease Reversal Clinic. So thank you for your time, Dr. Fuhrman.

Joel Fuhrman, MD

Thank you. Good luck, everybody.