Roizen Michael F - The RealAge Diet: Make Yourself Younger with What You Eat

Contents

1 The Enjoyable Miracle
Using Food to Regain the Energy of Your Youth

2 What Is the Effect of Your Food Choices on Your RealAge
Now, and How Much Younger Do You Want to Be?

3 The Bestseller Diets: Do They Make Your RealAge Younger
or Older? Modifying the Bestseller Diets to Make Them Healthier

5 How the Right Supplements Can Keep You Young
And a Trick for Remembering Your Supplement ABCs

6 You Can Change Your Eating Habits
Eleven Strategies That Make Healthful Eating Easier and More Enjoyable

7 What about When I Eat Out?
Be the CEO!

8 Distinguish Which Occasions Are Really Special,
and Then Distinguish Yourself

9 You Can Reach Your Goals Faster!
Through the Door, or Turning Heads Once Again

10 Menu Makeovers
The RealAge Plan: Eight Weeks to Better Taste

When I was writing RealAge, my colleagues often asked me, Why are you so excited about writing this hook? The answer was easy. Ive found a way to explain difficult medical concepts so that patients know how much control they have over their health, I told them. The concept has been so motivating for both my patients and myself that I want to share it. It could very possibly change the health of the nation!

Those who knew me knew that I set big goals. Those who didnt know me so well just told me I was wasting my timethat it was unlikely a doctor who was so grounded in science and had written only scientific papers and books could write a book that a major publishing house would take. They said it was even less likely that the general public would read it. They often ended the conversation with, Stick to basic science research. But I couldnt stop.

Well, people bought the book like hotcakes, and they jammed our website, even crashing it twice. RealAge became a bestseller in the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Great Britain. The book even temporarily bumped a Harry Potter book from the number one position on the Amazon.com bestseller list.

Why?

RealAge presented a concept that ended the confusion in medicine. Readers could use the concept to make rational decisions about health in the same way they make rational decisions about money. Lets look at the concept of money.

If I gave you a hundred dollars, you could buy a truly great bottle of wine or an incredible new pair of running shoes. You could buy an armful of flowers for someone special. Sure, you could do a lot with a hundred dollars, but you couldnt buy a condominium. Or a new car. You know exactly how far a hundred dollars goes.

Because money has concrete value, we can compare activities as diverse as going to a pro basketball game and paying the phone bill, and then choose between them. We know that a hundred dollars will buy an evening out or a month of phone calls to Mom, but not both. The clearly defined value of money allows us to evaluate our choices.

I did not give readers a hundred dollars. I gave them something better: years of life. RealAge taught many people how to add yearsvibrant yearsto their life. It showed them how to live younger, with a method that makes health decisions as easy to understand as the worth of a hundred dollars.

The biggest problem with understanding health care decisions is that we had no common currency for health matters. We had no way of measuring decisions as diverse as buckling a seat belt, exercising, or taking vitamins regularly. For readers of RealAge, all that changed.

As complex as medical science is, there are only two real questions in medicine: How long will you live? How healthy and vigorous will your life be while youre living it? The fundamental motivation for choosing any behaviors, be it eating, taking calcium supplements, or wearing sunscreen, is to have a more enjoyable, longer, healthier life. Unfortunately, medical studies and news reports almost never make it that simple. RealAge determines exactly how an array of health behaviors affect youth and vigor. It correlates these behaviors to a common measurementyears of life.

Remember your school reunion? Although you all were the same age, not everyone looked it. Some people wore the years well, still young and exuberant, despite the passage of time. They had learned how to slow the pace of aging. Others looked as if they had aged ten years more than everyone elseand they probably had. They had probably chosen certain behaviors that had caused their bodies to age much faster than they should.

The RealAge program shows every single one of us just how simple it is to become one of those people who really are younger than their calendar years. We really can slow the pace of agingand even reverse it. Although weve never been able to talk about getting younger beforetime moves in only one direction, after allnow we can. Even though you cant change your calendar age, you can make your RealAge younger. That is, you can have the health profile of someone who is chronologically younger and healthy. Best of all, its not that difficult to do. Slowing the pace of aging can be relatively easy and painless. You can start feeling more invigorated, energetic, and healthful almost as soon as you adopt the RealAge program. You wont just live longer, youll live younger.