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The RealAge Diet:
Make Yourself Younger with What You Eat
“It takes at least twenty
minute to work off the calories you can consume in about thirty
seconds.”
Theory:
You can start getting younger
right now, simply by making small nutrient-rich and calorie poor
substitutions in your meals. Your RealAge can be altered based on the food
and health choices.
Calories:
When you realize how long it
takes to burn off calories, you see how important it is to make every
calorie count, to make every calorie nutrient rich
- Good
calorie choice – whole grain breads, whole grain pastas, low-fat and
nonfat dairy products including skim milk, nonfat yogurt, and cottage
cheese
Nutrients:
- Antioxidants
and free radicals – help to keep your immune system healthy
- Vitamins
– eating fruits and vegetables that are rich in vitamin C (such as
mangoes and sweet potatoes) and in lycopene (found in tomatoes,
watermelon, guava, and pink grapefruit) may reduce your risk of aging
and illness and your RealAge more than 3 years younger
- Flavonoids
– they make biological processes work faster.
Best sources are onions, green tea, cranberries, broccoli,
celery, apples, grapes, raisins, and leafy green vegetables
- Cartenoids
– have anti-aging properties – Tomatoes, carrots and apricots and
in other fruits and vegetables of similar hues.
Carbohydrates:
- Eat
complex carbohydrates such as nutty or rye breads, brown rice, whole
grain bread, corn, and cereal products.
- Many
foods that have a high glycemic index can be made to act like low-glycemic
foods by eating a little healthy fat first.
- Eating
a carbohydrate like French bread with a little olive oil or wheat
bread with peanut butter decrease the bread’s ability to increase
blood sugar
- Fiber
– because it is largely indigestible, it passes through the
digestive tract intact and has no calories
·
Studies have shown that people who eat a breakfast that
contains fiber are not as hungry in the late afternoon as those who
don’t get fiber in the morning
·
The RealAge goal is to get 6 gram of fiber for breakfast
Protein:
- The
specific proteins you eat may be very important to your rate of aging
- Eat
a diet rich in fish, skinless white meat of poultry, beans, rice, soy
and almonds, and other nuts
Fat
- Your
RealAge will be more than 3.5 years younger if you limit your total
fat intake to around 25 percent of your daily calories and make sure
that less than 30 percent of that fat (less than 8 percent of your
total calories) is saturated and trans fats.
- Avoided
all partially hydrogenated vegetable oil will make your RealAge as
much as 2.7 years younger
Sample
Menu Plan
- Breakfast:
Kashi high-fiber cereal with fresh blueberries and soy milk, orange or
grapefruit juice (preferably with extra pulp), vanilla soy milk
- Lunch:
Peanut or soy nut butter and whole-fruit spread or whole-strawberry
preserves on whole wheat bread, two plums, a glass of soy or skim milk
- Dinner:
Six Brazil nuts and Six almonds, packaged salad greens, plus chopped
scallions, drizzled with an excellent bottled olive oil-based salad
dressing; six whole grain crackers; a glass of red wine
- Dessert:
Fresh strawberries dipped
in one half ounce of melted dark (not milk) chocolate
- Snack:
Whole wheat pretzels with good yellow mustard
Michael F. Roizen, M.D. and John La Puma, M.D. 2001.
New York
: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
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