YOU: On a Diet - and other Oprah inspired diets - Monday Dr Oz on Oprah

I gotta tell ya ... I'm still thinking about that demo of the folks that ate ... was it gorillas? food. I've always been a big proponent of lean proteins (including soy) but those stats were very interesting.

That really interested me as well as the calcium study they did.

I gotta tell ya ... I'm still thinking about that demo of the folks that ate ... was it gorillas? food. I've always been a big proponent of lean proteins (including soy) but those stats were very interesting.

I always ask people who say they have tried EVERYTHING to lower their cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar if they have given a raw foods vegan diet a try for at least 6 weeks, when they blame genetics and genetics alone.

I guess I can point to this experiment of only 12 days, done by a well-respected and reputable physician now!!! :carrot: :broc:

I love it!

(I have provided others with many other references from reputable sources, but having a current and well-liked, popular physician showing that a raw foods vegan diet can have such dramatic results in so short a time is such great news!).

Was it 12 days? I forget ... and did their cholesterol come down 25 points or 25 percent?

It was 12 days and after 12 days, their cholesterol dropped by an average of 25 percent, their blood pressure dropped by 10 percent, and they lost about 10 pounds each (including two-and-a-quarter inches of their waists).

Dr. Oz said:

"The results were … remarkable," Dr. Oz says.

"When you eat this kind of food, you're sending a very clear message to your brain," Dr. Oz says.

"You're taking calories and nutrients. What we normally do in America is we give calories to people without nutrition. The natural colors are gone, and so your brain sits back there and says, 'Am I still hungry or not?' ".

:carrot: :broc: :carrot:

I am not familiar with the gorilla (?) diet.
Could someone enlighten (no pun intended) us?
Thanks,
jo

All raw fruits, vegetables and some nuts (as well as 1 salted olive) and in this case, 11 pounds of it daily. The diet was based on what our "ancestors" ate as well as what gorillas directly eat.

It's all vegan and all raw. :carrot: :broc:

this is interesting, sound like it can be very healthy, if you can stick with it. I'm not sure how long I could go eating only raw foods. Hey someone should start a raw food challenge, maybe it could be short, like a few days. I'd join in and try it.

Interesting. So I did a search on what gorillas eat. I thought the following info raises a couple questions about the raw plants only concept.

http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional_diets/gorilla.html

But surely a diet of raw plants for a few days would be good. I'd join in on the challenge.

Ah, good ol' Weston Price. :lol:

Well, we eat insects too, I suppose, and if we are lucky, breast milk when we are young, just as the gorillas do. :o

That being said, the studies that I have seen, all yield great results (just as the experiment Dr. Oz did) and were all raw vegan diets, regardless of what gorillas may or may not eat. :lol:

Oops. SoulBliss, you beat me to my attempt to delete my post, or to substitute the link for another with different gorilla diet info. After I posted the link i went back to it and looked at its home page. Hmm. Sounds like I picked a pretty darn biased link. I didn't mean to do that; I was just trying to get info about gorilla diets without bias!
Oh well. I guess whatever info is out there is out there. Food for thought.

I guess whatever info is out there is out there. Food for thought.

Exactly, food for thought! Also, I think there is often no substitute for personal experience, regardless of what any "authority" on any matter says. For example, I personally have seen people drop high cholesterol and blood sugar by following a raw vegan diet, years before any study I had even heard of substantiated this.

I was doing some research and it seems as though there are several variations of the raw food diet and vegan diets. I find it very interesting, Id like to find one that I think I could do for maybe a week and try it out. If anyone has any ideas for me, please let me know.

hey girls!! I'm in class when Oprah is on but I love Dr. Oz. I didn't catch this episode but the results seem really wonderful!!
I keep hearing about the raw vegan/veggie plan and how wonderful it is.... but sometimes it can also get expensive, especially for students like me who are low on cash AND time to go to the market!

But surely we could improve our general health by eating more like this. I agree that it would be hard to stick to for long (for me) but I certainly can eat more naturally, more raw etc.

i love meat tho, it would be so hard to give up all that protein....i think i would crave hamburgers too much ...i want to try something tho to lose my last 15 pounds...is there any reading material on this?...i need like a day by day or meal by meal plan

I'm sure you could come up with your own meal plan, pre plan it then just stick to it.
I don't know if I can completely give up meat either but I did give up all red meats. I pretty much only ear turkey and chicken, ground turkey tastes great to me, I even eat turkey bacon and like it alot.

I'm pretty surprised that I'm not missing meat. I had turkey on Monday, cottage cheese on Tuesday and no overt proteins yesterday at all.

I did eat some baked crap at work yesterday. But ... I'm almost dreaming of grains!

I'm home today so it's either a good opportunity to try to stick with fruit and vegetables alone -or- to incorporate grains and fish. I really wanted to try to make polenta ... hmmm.

But surely we could improve our general health by eating more like this. I agree that it would be hard to stick to for long (for me) but I certainly can eat more naturally, more raw etc.

And I dont think the point of the study was that it had to be all or nothing. The point was to add more and more of these foods to your diet and remove the more processed foods. The study was an extreme case, but I dont think you need to go to that extreme to see benefits. I am not fully convinced that over the long haul the limited foods presented in the study would be a healthy diet. Losing 10 lbs in 10 days...well a lot of that was probably water and colon cleansing...hopefully!

I do think the point that blood pressure and cholesterol needs to be addressed from a lifestyle standpoint first was made.

susan...sorry i had a little chuckle at your comment that you gave up meat but had turkey and fish ??? did you mean red meat? At last i was taught in my animal science classes turkey and fish were meat...i'm not trying to be mean just being silly

i personally don't think i could give up meat..i definately have cut wayyy back on red meat and started eating more fruit/veggies and limit my processed foods...but i'm not sure if i could do a raw vegan diet. I really think i'd go off the deep end. I envy those that could give up meat for moral/health reasons, but unfortuantely i like meat too much and since i have 2 degrees in animal science i sort of see a point in meat...but i'm not knocking any vegans out there..i just know i couldn't do it.

I guess I'm meat indoctrinated ... golly I haven't had meat for over two days! Can you tell I live in farming country?

Seriously, I just meant that what I missed was grains, not the meat. I don't think I even want to eat that ape/gorilla style. But Dr Oz does make some very good points.

i think the points dr oz makes are pretty amazing...but i know i couldn't do it. I know i'd probably loose weight instantly...and luckily i don't have a cholesterol problem...but god i couldn't do without at least some meat a week.

I'm going off on a tangent here...

susan...sorry i had a little chuckle at your comment that you gave up meat but had turkey and fish ??? did you mean red meat? At last i was taught in my animal science classes turkey and fish were meat...i'm not trying to be mean just being silly

You mean fish isn't a vegetable? :dizzy:

Man, if I had a dollar for every time someone said they were vegetarian, then went on to chronicle the great fish or chicken they had or to offer me meat of all sorts (sea creatures, fishes, chickens etc.) I would be very wealthy indeed!!! :?: "Meat" is anything that isn't a plant or animal secretion, ya know? If it has flesh and was living, it is meat! :carrot:

The other thing that is so silly to me is when people say they are vegan or "practically or mostly vegan" then go on to say that they eat (insert many types of animal products here) various very much NOT vegan foods. :^:

Sorry about the tangent, I just find this illogical behavior baffling!

<<<I am kinda like Spock ;)

Maybe it is because I was raised Catholic. But I am also of scientific mind. So which side wins in this debate? Then there is the "what was in your formative years" factor. But my default definition of vegetarian says that fish is not "meat." That's the Catholic-Friday-formative-years influence thing that is clearly outweighing my logical side. I remember those calendars we got from the Church, with the little picture of the fish on the Fridays - "No Meat on Fridays." But chickens were definitely considered to be meat.
I have no idea why the Catholics excluded fish from their definition of meat. Does anyone know?

Wild guess, and gut answer here...Maybe because when they developed the doctrines, there wasn't the science to classify fish as being part of the animal kingdom? They don't breathe air and all, ya know? Maybe because the wealthy were able to eat other, larger, more expensive animals as they were "luxury" foods and sea creatures were considered "peasant" food, therefore to "deny" yourself of the pleasure, you could default to "lesser" animals? :D

Thankfully, we know better now and realize that fish and other sea creatures are indeed part of the animal kingdom. :lol:

I just looked up what I could find - I guess the exclusion was for the flesh of warm-blooded animals, and fish are cold-blooded animals. I still don't know why they would make the division based on that distinction though.

Well, religion and spirituality doesn't always make sense, does it? We as humans often do things that go beyond logic, in the name of religion or spirituality, right? ;)

Even though I haven't seen an Oprah episode in years... I popped on and read this thread.

I have been reading "The China Study" which is very interesting and talks about a whole foods plant based diet (basically vegan but without processed foods). Although I wasn't very happy about the beginning of the book calling the South Beach diet a high fat/high protein diet, I think the rest of the book is fascinating. One thing that struck me was that what we consider good cholesterol levels in the US and other western countries is actually considered high cholesterol in other countries that eat minimal meat/dairy. The other thing I found fascinating is that animal based protein may contribute to cancer cell growth. I had already known that animal based protein can have a negative impact on our calcium levels but I didn't know that it could contribute to something such as cancer.

I am personally trying to follow a vegan diet although I don't think I'd ever call myself a vegetarian or a vegan because I really have no real qualms about eating meat or dairy. In the past 2 weeks though, I've eaten meat once and cheese a couple of times. In the past week, I've eaten no meat and no main dairy items but I have eaten some things that contain trace amounts of dairy like my beloved bread :)

Is it hard? Honestly, no. It is a challenge sometimes, especially when eating out. I think it is fun to change up your diet and see how you can fit an eating pattern into your life. This is actually my 2nd or 3rd attempt at trying to follow a mostly vegan diet (sorry SoulBliss if I offend!) but the first few times I failed miserably. Even a vegetarian diet was only fleeting with me mostly because I find my weight stalling if I eat a vegetarian diet. It is my ideal though and has been for a couple years to cut out most, if not all, animal products. I work on improvement, not perfection :) I think once you start enjoying non animal products, it is a lot easier to cut animal products out.

What I don't understand is how did meat at main meals become the default? Again, grwoing up Catholic, Fridays were the big exception to the rule. I loved Fridays. If you ever ate my mom's pork chops you would understand. But anyway: How did it come to be so standard? If anything I would intuitively think it would be the other way around; more meals without meat than with it.
As I understand it, that would also make sense agriculturally. There are some agricultural lands that are not suitable for crops but are suitable for grazing animals. But if we only used the meat obtained from these grazing animals, we would not come anywhere close to being able to eat meat with that "default" frequency that we do. Hence, we have the gawd-awful feedlots. If people would just cut back, even a little...... it would be so much better for the planet.
I don't like to eat beef, pork or chicken. I do like dairy, and whenever possible I choose goat dairy. I don't want to inadvertently support the veal industry by buying cow dairy, which I am concerned about doing. (Where do the males go?)

I don't want to inadvertently support the veal industry by buying cow dairy, which I am concerned about doing. (Where do the males go?)

Well, you are right, they become veal calves or hamburgers, naturally! :lol:

Wanna know what happens to the male chicks at most egg hatcheries/chicken farms? :^: PM me if you don't already know!

This is actually my 2nd or 3rd attempt at trying to follow a mostly vegan diet (sorry SoulBliss if I offend!) but the first few times I failed miserably. Even a vegetarian diet was only fleeting with me mostly because I find my weight stalling if I eat a vegetarian diet. It is my ideal though and has been for a couple years to cut out most, if not all, animal products. I work on improvement, not perfection :) I think once you start enjoying non animal products, it is a lot easier to cut animal products out.

:cp: You aren't offensive, you are AMAZING! I think everytime someone chooses to incorporate more plant-based foods, they are doing a good thing for us all (planet, animals, self). :carrot: :broc:

Spiny,
When I went to China, I think I became superly meated out. I wondered where was the rice which often came last if at all.

When I asked about the meals it was explained since we were "special guests", we got a lot of meat dishes which are something that cost a lot of money and didn't get much if any rice because rice is cheap. Something that the book "The China Study" also touches in is that throughout history meat has been associated with affluence so the more meat you ate, the richer you were. Obviously, the US went totally meaty in our growth as a nation. We are truly rich compared to many other nations but too bad it is visible on our waist lines and our growing healthcare costs.