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What IS ten years younger?
Frequently Asked Questions
Twenty-two of the most commonly asked questions about Ten Years Younger.
1. What Is the Accelerated Aging Syndrome?
Accelerated aging leaves you feel old and exhausted long before your time. It is best characterized by:
- An expanding waistline, shrinking muscles and fitness, decreased thinking power, worsening cholesterol profiles, rising blood pressure, more aches and pains, and decreasing energy.
- The most common causes of this syndrome are low carb diets, inactivity, toxins, and excessive inflammation.
- The bottom line is that average Americans are aging more rapidly than ever.
2. Tell Us About Your Background
I feel blessed to have a diverse background. I’m a physician, nutritionist, author, and a medical researcher, and to ensure my nutrient packed recipes would be delicious, I completed a chef internship at the Four Seasons Restaurants in Seattle. I feel grateful to have helped thousands of people in various medical settings, including as the medical director of the Pritikin Longevity Center®, plus I had the opportunity to share my Ten Years Younger Program with hundreds of thousands if not millions when it was featured on a 5-segment Discovery Program.
Currently, I’m the medical director for Masley Optimal Health Center and the Ten Years Younger Program—Younger, Trimmer, Fitter with St Anthony’s Health Care and BayCare Health Systems, in beautiful St Petersburg, Florida and my passion is empowering people to be younger, trimmer, fitter, and mentally sharper.
3. How Is Your Program Different?
There are two key aspects that make Ten Years Younger unique.
- First, in contrast to all the myth being sold, my results show that the average person following this program will lose 10 pounds of not just weight but pure fat, increase their strength more than 70%, increase their aerobic fitness more than 20-30%, increase mental speed and attention greatly, lower their cholesterol, and feel great too.
- The early writing started as a research project to reverse diabetes and heart disease, but what I discovered is that what works wonders for reversing life-threatening illnesses provides a total make-over for average Americans, making them younger, trimmer, fitter, and mentally sharper.
- Second is that Ten Years Younger is comprehensive. Beyond diet, it includes an exercise and strength training program, plus Ten Years Younger emphasizes stress management, skin care, detoxifying your body, & clarifying what supplements you need to take. TYY even comes with more than 100 delicious, easy-to-make recipes from my own kitchen.
4. Why Is a Comprehensive Program Needed? Why Not Just Diet?
Cutting calories will result in short-term weight loss, but as most people have learned the hard way, that weight loss results in weight regain, and usually you gain an extra 5 pounds in the end. The best predictor of long-term weight loss is a comprehensive program combining healthy eating, regular exercise and stress management. Diet alone can help with short term weight loss, but it won’t make you younger either, only a comprehensive lifestyle can make you younger, trimmer, and fitter!
5. Come on. Can You Really Be 10 Years Younger in Just 10 Weeks?
Absolutely! My research shows that if average Americans follow Ten Years Younger, they will be ten years trimmer, stronger, have more endurance, lower their cholesterol, and be mentally sharper too.
They sleep better, energy improves, and quality of life increases. It is easy to make this claim, because most Americans are getting old before their time, in essence, they suffer from Accelerated Aging and my program rejuvenates them.
Let me be completely realistic—if you’ve been doing everything perfectly, (diet, exercise, and stress management) you are already 10 years younger than the average American your age, but this is only 2-3% of Americans. I can’t make these people younger, but can help them to optimize the aging process.
6. How Do Low Carb Diets Accelerate Aging?
Low carb diets deprive you of anti-aging nutrients and fiber. After all, the vast majority of anti-aging nutrients come from healthy carbohydrates. So if you limit healthy carbs, you limit anti-aging nutrients. The rapid weight loss associated with low-carb diets makes them popular (people want fast results), but they cause you to lose both muscle and fat, but when your regain weight, you only regain fat, cycle three times and they make you flabbier over time.
- From a medical perspective, low-carb, high-animal-protein diets are associated with an increased risk for bone loss, and potentially kidney failure.
- From a quality of life perspective low-carb diets make you constipated, deplete your energy, concentration, and drive, and are reported to cause a loss in libido. To top it off, low carb diets often give you dreadful breath.
- In contrast, Ten Years Younger gives you energy, promotes your health, and helps you lose fat while gaining muscle mass, making you not just lighter, but shapelier and sexier.
7. Most of your competition write diet books. Why the emphasis on exercise?
The goal should be to not just lose weight, but to be shapelier, fitter, sexier, and stronger. You might be able to lose weight in the short term with diet only, but you can’t make yourself younger.
Diet programs alone may in the long haul make people flabbier. The best predictor of permanent weight loss is NOT diet, but regular physical activity. In contrast, Ten Years Younger makes you younger, trimmer, and fitter, mentally sharper, and you feel great!
8. How Do You Measure Aging?
While researching Ten Years Younger, I identified five great measures of physiologic aging that change linearly with age and are also easy to measure. They are detailed in the book and here on my site.
They include:
– Aerobic fitness (VO2max and stress testing)
– Muscle mass (strength)
– Percent Body fat (waist/hip circumference measures → skin fold testing→ bioelectrical impedance)
– Cholesterol profile (Total cholesterol / HDL)
– Cognitive Function (10 questions → or computerized cognitive testing)
9. What is the Best Measure of Weight Control?
Weight itself is one of the worst measures of weight control, because you can lose weight, but be losing muscle & getting fatter. Your waistline is a better measure. Pull out that old tape measure and measure your waistline. Measuring body fat is a step better, but the best is a complete look at lean mass, body fat, and the ratio of one to the other. My Ten Years Younger Program teaches you how to do this
10. How Much Weight Did People Lose Following Your Program?
When it comes to weight loss, most people have a suit in their closet they are saving for the day when they have lost weight. I’ve helped hundreds of people fit into those suits, and hundreds more have told me that had to adjust their suits because they have lost so much weight.
With my TYY Program, the average person who is overweight lost 10 pounds of fat and 10 pounds of weight in just 10 weeks. During the ten week study, one person lost 18 pounds of weight. During the Discovery Show, 30 pounds was the maximum 10 week weight loss. My general rule is that 1 pound per week loss in fat mass is optimal and gives you the best chance of not just losing the weight but keeping it off too. That is like 10 oranges of fat volume, more than 2 footballs in just 10 weeks
Most programs look at weight loss and a 20 pound weight loss equals about 10 pounds of fat loss and 10 pounds of loss in lean mass (muscle), but as noted in detail in Ten Years Younger, losing lean mass increases the likelihood that they eventually regain the weight they lost.
I challenge any of the other programs to prove that you lose only fat, and gain strength and enhance thinking power following their recommendations.
11. As a Physician and Researcher, Why Did You Do a Chef Internship?
I wanted the foods I recommended to people to make them younger, trimmer, and fitter and to taste great. People won’t eat food that doesn’t taste good to them, at least not for very long. You have to add flavor, fragrance, and appearance to food, especially if you take away the foundations of deadly American cooking, “butter, white flour, and sugar." People don’t want to count calories, salt, or fat in food. They want recipes that taste great, that are easy to make, and are prepared with ingredients they find locally.
12. What Are the Themes Behind Your Age-Busting Diet?
- Ten Years Younger focuses upon “ADDING” foods that are good for you and that you like to eat. Choose healthy fats, healthy proteins, and healthy carbs. No magical ratios are required.
- Second, add fiber, because fiber is wonder for lowering cholesterol and blood sugar, and it helps you to feel full and satisfied, making it easier to stop eating.
- The third goal is to avoid toxins common in the American Diet, namely hydrogenated (trans) fat, refined carbs and sugars, and heavy metals
13. Tell Us About Your Sweet Sixteen Vitality Foods
In Ten Years Younger, there is a chapter that identifies 16 foods that should be eaten regularly such as
- Berries
- Green leafy and cancer-fighting vegetables
- Lean (seafood, chicken and turkey breasts, bean products) rather than mean protein (such as hamburger and sausage)
- Seafood (especially small mouth, cold water fish and shellfish)
- Nuts
- Whole grains, spices, and fragrant herbs
- And of course chocolate and cocoa daily
My experience shows that giving people foods to add regularly is easier and more fun to follow that giving them foods they can’t eat
14. Are Your Recipes Easy to Make?
You bet, there are many 10-15 minute meals listed in the meal plans, with shopping lists, too. My goal is you can find the ingredients in a typical grocery store, and make dinner easily. For the weekends, I might offer recipes that take a little more time, 30-40 minutes, but they are fabulous and worth that time, take the chiopino, or chocolate mouse recipes as examples. During my research studies, I discovered that my patients wanted a meal they could purchase with local ingredients, make it easily, and their spouse or partner would like it too. Voila, The Ten Years Younger Diet!
15. Do People Have Trouble Following Your Program?
No they don’t. Subjects told us it was easy to add the fiber and cut the saturated fat using the tables provided in the Ten Years Younger Program book. The diet was the easiest part!
The challenge of course was getting people to add activity, but we discovered that adding aerobic activity and strength training is absolutely essential to becoming ten years younger. Strengthened with that knowledge, I am more empowered to help people to succeed in achieving their ten years younger goal.
16. Why Is Building Muscle (Lean) Mass So Important?
I can’t understand why most of the diet plans have ignored this essential point! In fact, I feel it is irresponsible to promote rapid weight loss diets if you can’t conserve muscle mass when following them!
Muscle mass increases your ability to burn calories, it is the key factor that drives metabolic rate providing energy and drive, and preventing weight gain. Muscle mass decreases your risk of getting cancer, and increases your likelihood of surviving both surgery or pneumonia. Muscle mass is the retirement fund that keeps you young into your golden years
17. Why is Stress Management Emphasized?
Most people know that chronic stress can be deadly, yet stress isn’t all bad as it gives us purpose, challenges, and a reason to get up in the morning. What kills is not managing the stress. When stress isn’t managed, it makes it hard to exercise and eat well (I mean who says “please pass the steamed broccoli when they are stressed out, ice cream and donuts are the norm when stressed. Plus, stress increases cortisol and adrenaline that in excess are very harmful, stripping us of bone mass, muscle mass, injuring the memory center in the brain, and maybe worse of all—depositing fat around our heart, liver, and waistline. Ten Years Younger teaches you why adequate sleep, daily exercise, choosing a positive attitude, sharing hugs and intimacy are essential for stress management.
18. Do We Need To Worry About Toxins?
Clearly, you can eat well, exercise, manage your stress, but if you poison yourself you still accelerate aging. There are many toxins in the American diet, including simple sugars like white bread, white pasta, white rice, and the worst of these is corn syrup added to drinks. If that wasn’t enough, we also have to deal with hydrogenated or trans fats, something I prefer to call embalming fluid, pesticides, carcinogens from grilling meat, mercury, and pesticides. Ten Years Younger helps you to minimize all of these very common toxins.
19. Is Your Skin Important to Your Health or Is It Just a Cosmetic Issue?
Your skin is a wonderful marker for overall aging. Of course you have to protect yourself from sun damage, but once that’s accomplished, the skin is a beautiful marker of aging. Ten Years Younger is about reversing aging both on the inside and the outside, so why not look better too? People who feel good about their appearance live longer. Ten Years Younger gives you a whole chapter with six easy steps to care for your skin.
20. Can Supplements Make You Younger?
No supplements will make you “younger”,
but I recommend supplements
that slow the aging process
- Getting adequate calcium from a combination of food and supplements can slow bone loss.
- B vitamins can protect your brain and arteries from accelerated aging
- Vitamin D not only decreases your risk of bone fractures, it also decreases your risk for cancer and autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis
- Glucosamine sulfate can slow joint aging
- Adequate omega-3 fats can slow damage caused by inflammation and insulin resistance
- Supplements can slow many aspects of aging, I have dedicated a whole chapter to how to choose supplements and have much more supplement information here on my Web site.
21. But I’m too busy to take the time for this.
The busier you are, the more important it is that you think clearly. That is why I see so many company presidents and CEOs. They work 50-60+ hours per week and they need to maximize their mental performance. They have 100 critical things to do on their to-do-lists every day, they can’t afford to not finish because they were too tired. Clearly, more time spent at the gym provides better performance in the board room!
22. What Is the Best Indicator that Someone Completing Your Program is Ten Years Younger?
They feel ten years younger. In fact, many people have forgotten just how wonderful they really can feel. More than having just lost weight, they are physiologically ten years fitter and trimmer, and the inside and outside. My study results prove that they truly lost fat, are stronger, have better endurance, are mentally sharper, and their cholesterol is better, too
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