Fuhrman - Love Your Body

Talia is a dynamic author with a commitment to science-based nutrition and a true passion for healthy, delicious food. I urge young women everywhere to read this book!

JOHN MACKEY,

co-CEO of Whole Foods Market and coauthor of Conscious Capitalism

Love Your Body is the ultimate guide to discovering radiant health, beauty, and confidence! Its chock-full of important information, practical advice, and easy recipes and best of all, keeps you smiling along the way.

LISA BLOOM,

New York Times bestselling author of Think, Swagger, and Suspicion Nation

To my parents, Joel and Lisa, who have provided me with as much love, support, and guidance as any two parents could. I am eternally grateful to both of you.

H ow do you define beauty? I hope its not just skin deep. Authentic beauty stems from a larger energetic space, one where your physical, emotional, and spiritual needs are balanced. True beauty and health radiate from that core, where literally anything becomes possible. Sadly, this kind of beauty isnt typically valued in todays culture, which so often focuses simply on our one-dimensional appearance. Yet, if we looked past our skin, wed find a treasure trove of empowerment! This is the stuff that matters, that enables us to maintain our wholeness and also provide limitlessly to those around us. Connecting positively with others and the world around us only serves to build us all up collectivelyif we all did this, what a beautiful world it would be.

One of the best ways to start loving your body is by feeding it with love and care. At a cellular level, we are constructed of the food that we consume. Our bodies take in sustenance, break it down, and reassemble it into parts and systems of our physiology. We truly are what we eat! As Ann Wigmore, a 20th century holistic healthcare practitioner, said, The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison. Whole plant foods are the most nutrient-rich, disease-fighting, health-promoting foods on the planet and serve as the perfect fuel for optimal well-being.

Talia Fuhrman creatively combines all of these crucial messages in Love Your Body, weaving together positive psychology, healthy nutrition, and emotional and social support. In this information-packed book, youll find a vast collection of fact-based advice, peppered throughout with delicious and exciting nutrient-dense recipes. Inspiration and motivation burst from the pages in Talias friendly voice, filling your heart with support and clarity.

So eat for nourishment, nurture your inner beauty, and love your body!

Julieanna Hever, MS, RD, CPT, author of The Complete Idiots Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition and The Vegiterranean Diet and host of Veria Livings What Would Julieanna Do?

Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend.

LAO-TZU

A s the daughter of Joel Fuhrman, MD, nutritional doctor and bestselling author of books such as Eat to Live and Super Immunity, I think that food and its power to influence the body were implanted into my brain long before I knew how to read, write, or count.

While my friends parents cooked chicken fingers, turkey burgers, steak, and other conventional American fare for dinner, my parents prepared butternut squash soup, grilled vegetable shish kebabs, and black bean burgers, all accompanied by the biggest salads youve ever seen. As a little girl, Id see patients walk into my dads office miserable, overweight, and plagued by ill health and then come in months later after following his recommendations feeling jubilant and literally looking glowingly healthy. They didnt even seem like the same people! Granted, at the time, I couldnt truly appreciate how much my dad was helping people.

I ate the foods my parents made for me with gusto, but this didnt stop me from wanting what my friends ate, too. In my house, soda was viewed as a malicious drug, anything coming from a package was a big no-no, and I quickly learned that if I was going to eat like my friends, I would need to venture into operation sneaky child mode. At tennis camp I felt like a rebel committing an atrocious crime if I bought M&Ms from the vending machine, but I did it anyway because I wanted to fit in with my friends. I received a rush of pleasure when I raided my friends kitchen cabinets for Lucky Charms and Capn Crunch, and I would regularly attempt to get away with buying sugar-laden chocolate chip cookies at school lunches. I even attended junk food slumber parties, eating the most gosh-darn awful, kid-friendly foods while watching Clueless or Romy and Micheles High School Reunion and gossiping the night away. We thought we were so cool. Those evenings are as memorable to me as the transformation that blossomed in my little self a bit later on in middle school.

Around the seventh grade, I began to comprehend the importance of optimal nutrition. Instead of being a rebellious child, I wanted to be the epitome of a healthful eater. The phrase You are what you eat finally kicked in, a pride in my unconventional eating habits flourished, and I became an unstoppable walking nutrition encyclopedia. I even went so far as to criticize my friends. Are you really going to eat that doughnut? I would demand, and then begin a diatribe on the dangers of consuming partially hydrogenated oils and trans fatty acids. Understandably, quite a few of my friends were annoyed, and some thought I was off my rocker! However, I soon learned that the best way to educate is to practice what you preach, and people will ask questions if they are interested. Excitement about taking care of your health comes from within, regardless of age.

I read extensively on nutrition, including my fathers books. I developed a new respect for my pops and another one of my idols, John Robbins (Google him; he is the definition of awesome). Once I grasped why it was so important to eat plant-based, nutrient-rich foods, I began cooking up a storm, searching out the best recipes, learning cooking skills from my dad (who happens to be a culinary genius), and learning to relish the taste of home-cooked meals even more. Understanding that these foods were badass, disease-fighting powerhouses only made them taste better. Every bite became like Mother Natures medicine that nourished my cells and protected them from the future evils of chronic diseases. There was no deprivation for me! I enjoyed chocolate-cherry smoothies sweetened with bananas and dates; homemade whole wheat, thin-crust vegetable pizzas; and my moms roasted butternut squash dish with crunchy nuts and naturally sweet dried fruit. Combining this with the physical activity I got from playing tennis, I felt amazing, vibrant, and alive.

Confession: Even though my lifestyle resulted in a steady, healthy weight, I didnt always feel good about the way I looked. Our societys extremely high standards of beauty can make any girl feel inadequate, regardless of her actual appearance. In middle school and high school, I was often not comfortable in my own skin and fought a constant battle with my anxieties about the number on the scale or how I looked in the mirror. At my worst, I would venture to the scale each morning, and if I gained just a pound, I would feel awful and think about how I needed to adjust what I ate for the rest of the day. The ridiculous thing was that at the time, I thought that this was perfectly reasonable and even what I