The Secret to Preventing Disease, Boosting Energy, Enhancing Your Appearance, and Increasing Your Lifespan

If I told you there was a simple lifestyle tweak that would reduce your risk for most chronic diseases, improve your sex life, reduce premature aging, help you lose weight, and add approximately 7.8 years to your life, would you be interested? Your immediate reaction might be — “Of course!” but despite the well-known health benefits associated with this tweak, only 3.3 of Americans have actually made it. So what is this tweak, you ask? It’s switching from an animal-based diet to a plant-based diet. If you’re suddenly weary, read-on, what you learn may transform your opinion and your life!

Proven Benefits

• Naturally lower in calories, fat and cholesterol
• Helps to effortlessly reduce body weight (vegans are on average 30 lbs. lighter than meat eaters)
• Higher in fiber, vitamins, minerals, and DNA-protecting antioxidants
• Helps reduce cholesterol, blood pressure and the risk for America’s #1 killer—heart disease
• Lowers the risk for most other chronic diseases as well, including: cancer, type-2 diabetes, insulin resistance, obesity, kidney disease, liver disease, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), and stroke[i]
• Helps prevent and eliminate Estrogen Dominance—a dangerous hormonal imbalance that is silently sabotaging the health of many Americans
• Reduces inflammation and oxidative stress—which are at the root of most chronic diseases
• Increases alkalinity
• Promotes healthy, youthful looking skin
• Dramatically boosts energy levels
• Enhances sex life by increasing libido, blood flow, and lubrication (vegans have significantly higher testosterone levels)

*Bonus benefit: While not health-related, vegetarianism is better for the environment. By eliminating animal products, you reduce deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, pollution and climate changes; save water, land mass, and other precious resources; and increase the amount of grains available to feed the hungry.

The Incomplete Protein Myth

There’s a group of meat eating advocates who argue that animal protein is not only beneficial, but necessary. They claim that you can’t get complete protein from a plant-based diet and you have to diligently combine certain plant foods in order to get all of the essential amino acids. This is a myth that was debunked by the scientific nutrition community decades ago, unfortunately, however, it is still perpetuated by companies with a financial interest at stake.

In truth, many plant foods do contain all the essential amino acids (hemp, chia, sprouted brown rice, spirulina etc.), and the ones that don’t, do not have to be eaten together. Plant-based proteins are also better absorbed and utilized by the body and you can easily meet or even exceed recommended requirements by consuming a varied plant-based diet.

It Takes Skill Power Not Willpower

Most people eventually fail when they try to make healthy diet and lifestyle changes. A lack of will power is often blamed for their failure but that is unfair. As David Katz rightly points out willpower is not enough, skill power is what is really required for making lasting, positive changes. Those who lead healthy lives are not stronger willed, they have simply developed the necessary skills to do so. They know how to: eat well (even when on the run), deal with their emotions, enjoy being active, and how to make it all work synergistically. These skills don’t come naturally, but they can be acquired by everybody. Some tools to help you do so include: doing your own research online, reading self-help books such as David Katz “Disease-Proof,” and incorporating powerful behavioral modification tools such as hypnotherapy, meditation, and/or Laser Focus Concentration: http://www.delgadonaturals.com/lfc-brainwave-glasses-w-sleep-mask/.

Ditch the All-Or-Nothing Attitude

If the thought of never eating meat again distresses you to the point where you dismiss the plant-based diet all together, listen-up. While a vegetarian diet is associated with the greatest disease-fighting and longevity benefits, complete avoidance of all animal products is not compulsory. Many of the longest living populations (such as Sardinia, Italy and Okinawa, Japan) eat mostly plant foods but do consume the occasional piece of fresh fish, or wild-caught meat. By limiting your serving size to no more than 1-3 ounces of meat or fish, once or twice per week, you will reap many of the same health benefits. It’s important to remember however, that you’re not only what you eat, but also what you eat, eats—so factory farmed animals should be avoided at all costs.

The Take Away

Eating a vegetarian diet alone is not enough to produce health and longevity benefits. You need to consume a diverse, whole-foods, plant-based diet, and vastly reduce or eliminate packaged foods. A simple rule of thumb is: “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food,” (a quote by Michael Pollan). Although changing your diet may seem intimidating at first, after a few weeks it will become much easier, and after a few months it will become second nature. In the meantime, when the urge to quit sets-in, repeat to yourself: “This is adding years to my life, and life to my years!”

*The “Simply Healthy” cookbook includes a wide-range of flavors and delicious, healthy recipes that will prevent you from feeling deprived, and make the transition to plant-based eating far easier: https://unitynaturals.com/product-category/books-and-media/

**This article is based off a YouTube interview between Dr. Nick Delgado and Dr. David Katz.

To watch the video in its entirety: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DiGkt2YAA4&list=PLSOmCTS_4-cri5Jgv1WLAZBYcntKMkzVV&index=3

[i] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677008/[/fusion_text][/fullwidth]