LUKE COUTINHO WITH ANUSHKA SHETTY

THE MAGIC WEIGHT-LOSS PILL

PENGUIN BOOKS
 Contents

About the Authors

List of Acronyms
Foreword by Shilpa Shetty Kundra
Introduction
Authors’ Note

Part I: Preparing for the Magic Weight-loss Pill

1. The Fundamental Law of Weight Loss

2. Balanced Nutrition
3. Adequate Exercise
4. Sleep and Recovery
5. Emotional Detoxification

Part II: The Most Powerful Lifestyle Changes and Habits to Lose Weight and Keep It Off

Conclusion
Testimonials
Notes
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright
 About the Authors

Luke Coutinho is a globally renowned holistic lifestyle coach and award-

winning holistic nutritionist. He is the co-author of the bestseller The Great
Indian Diet with Shilpa Shetty. Luke was among the GQ 50 Most
Influential Young Indians 2018 and the Times Power Men 2018, and
received the Elle award for the Best Health Expert of the Year 2018 and
Best in the Industry (Nutritionist) by Vogue in 2018.
Luke is an adviser and the head of integrative lifestyle and nutrition at
Pure Nutrition, which creates pure plant-based formulations and cold-
pressed oils. He is also the co-founder of GOQii, a digital healthcare
platform that provides personalized coaching.

Anushka Shetty is an actress who has worked in Bollywood, Tamil and

Telugu movies, including in the Bahubali films, playing princess Devasena.
Anushka, having been a yoga teacher and still a student of Bharath Thakur,
like Luke, also strongly believes in a complete sense of well-being that
begins with embracing yourself. Together, they look forward to spreading
awareness on ways and techniques that help each one, from different walks
of life, live one common goal: a healthy life and being the best version of
themselves.
 Dedicated to the citizens of India and the world #gethealthyindia

And to all those women and men out there struggling to lose weight and get
healthy

And to the love of my life, Tyanna Brooklyn Coutinho, a constant reminder

of the beauty and innocence of life
 List of Acronyms

BMR : Basal metabolic rate

CRP : C-reactive protein
DHEA : Dehydroepiandrosterone
ENS : Enteric nervous system
ESR : Erythrocyte sedimentation rates
HDL : High-density lipoprotein
HGH : Human growth hormone
HIIT : High-intensity interval training
LDL : Low-density lipoproteins
MCFA : Medium-chain fatty acids
MCT : Medium-chain triglyceride
MMA : Mixed martial arts
PCOD : Polycystic ovarian disease
PCOS : Polycystic ovary syndrome
PKA : Protein kinase
PTH : Parathyroid hormone
T3 : Thyroid 3
T4 : Thyroid 4
TSH : Thyroid stimulating hormone
UTI : Urinary tract infection
UVB : Ultraviolet B (rays)
WBC : White blood cells
 Foreword

When Luke told me he was working on The Magic Weight-loss Pill, I

loved the idea. Everyone wants such a solution, including me, because we
are all so obsessed about weight rather than being health-oriented.
However, this book will prove how easy it is to lose weight and maintain it,
while remaining in good health and allowing your body to function at the
optimal level.
The experience that Luke has of being one of the leading nutritionists in
India has really added weight to this book. From my experience, I know
that he is someone who connects with people on a personal level, on their
journey towards better health. He is an absolute authority on health and
nutrition, and someone I can trust with my eyes closed. I’m sure he will
help many people through the wisdom captured in this book. The
knowledge he has gained through his experiences of treating people and
reiterating that a lifestyle modification is key to consistent good health will
definitely add value to people’s lives.
I’ve known Luke as my son’s nutritionist and co-author of The Great
Indian Diet. It was a journey that was a learning curve for me and helped
me discover my passion for health and wellness. Now he is my go-to person
whenever I have any wellness-related queries, or even when I have doubts
about endorsing a certain product, because I know I can trust him implicitly.
My faith has come about as a result of his integrity. In all the years I have
known him, he has proved that he doesn’t like quick fixes and believes in
naturopathy, a quality I respect in this time and age.
Luke and Anushka, I’m so proud of you. Thank you for empowering the
world with your knowledge and experiences. More power to you. I will
always be grateful to you.
Shilpa Shetty Kundra
 Introduction

From Luke

I still remember the first day I met Anushka. We became good friends
within the one hour we spent together. I had flown down to Hyderabad to
meet her to discuss her health, lifestyle and diet. Her first request was clear,
‘I don’t want to destroy my health at any cost, even if it means giving up a
movie or two. I want to do it the right way. I want to respect my body and
use nature to heal me, even if it takes time. I have abused my body with
quick fixes and fad diets in the past, and I no longer want to take that route.’
That made me extremely happy. I like people who understand that health is
not a joke and there are no shortcuts when it comes to your well-being.
There are several that work, but they all come with dire consequences.
A few weeks later, we met again in Dubai. As the sun set, we sat on the
beach sipping cold lemon water, talking about life, health, love, yoga and
family. The more time I spent with Anushka, the more I understood how
serious she was about sending a message to all the young girls and women
that health means much more than just having a great body, great skin and
hair; it is about how a beautiful soul creates beauty. We spoke about weight
loss, cancer and disease, and how lifestyle is the drug when it comes to
prevention, healing and even losing weight.
A few hours later, we decided to put together a book of all the most
powerful lifestyle changes that have helped people lose weight across the
world. We had one vision, to send out a message to people struggling with
their health and weight that fad diets and exercise programmes don’t work.
Rather, one finds that simple, inexpensive lifestyle changes can bring about
powerful changes in one’s health. The idea of laying so much emphasis on
body image and how only certain body types are beautiful—which is only
facilitated by the media—impacts millions of girls, women, boys and men
across the world. This not only affects their self-esteem and leads them to
make the wrong choices about diets and exercise programmes, it can also
lead to frustration and depression. However, it doesn’t have to be that way.
We have to rise beyond just appreciating or loving ourselves and others for
our physical selves. Our emotional, spiritual, intellectual and mental selves
can be far more beautiful.
We felt that it was time to remind people that they all have an inbuilt
reset button when it comes to health and that everyone has a chance every
single day to change their lifestyle.
Anushka, it’s been an amazing journey with you so far, and I know there
is so much more that we will do to reach out to millions and hopefully
impact them in a positive way.

From Anushka

Had I not entered the industry, my life would have been completely
different, as I had thought of teaching yoga. However, after choosing this
field and being in it for the past twelve years, I found myself running
against time. There was the pressure of maintaining a specific body image
that people expect from actors. I used to be so lost at times because I did not
have the right support system; I went through a trial-and-error process until
I stepped back and realized how it had started affecting my health. I guess I
was able to survive for so long only because of my regular yoga routine.
I never felt this pressure during the initial days of acting because working
out and yoga were an integral part of my schedule then. I was very fit until I
started working late nights. I remember shooting for a movie until 3 a.m. It
was at this point that I started to see my body change. Had it not been for
that movie, I would never have imagined the impact of sleep on the body in
the long run.
The film industry wants everything quickly, and weight loss and weight
gain is no exception. For a newcomer, it’s easy to get carried away in this
rat race and end up falling into the same trap as everyone else. I have no
regrets though! I am very grateful for all that I went through, otherwise I
wouldn’t have taken out the time to slow down, reflect and realize how
important my body is to me and be able to talk about it today. Now I know
what it means to aim for a balance between the mind, body and soul for
good health.
Body image and health: I see so many young girls as well as middle-aged
women facing body-image issues these days. They want to lose weight and
get lean. Girls in classes five and six want their hair re-bonded and want
their eyes, lips, nose and body to resemble those of their favourite model’s
or actress’s. Everyone is chasing the way other people look because they
have formed an ideal body type in their minds, which, according to them, is
pretty and attractive. But they’re merely attracted by the glamour. This
leads people to adopt unhealthy lifestyle and habits, all of which lead to
bigger problems. Instead, accept yourself the way you are. You were born a
particular way, and nobody has the right to decide that you are less beautiful
than anyone else, except yourself. If you try to look like someone else, you
are literally killing who you are. Just break the shackles of your insecurities
and go out and see what best you can do to your body. You will realize that
more than anything else, one needs to be healthy. When you start to focus
on health, your confidence level will automatically go up. That’s what will
make you truly attractive.
People assume that if somebody is lean and in shape, that person is
healthy and happy, whereas somebody who is fat or has weight issues is
automatically categorized as unhealthy and unfit, even if they are truly
happy and content. One has to constantly fight this battle between meeting
standards that the world has set for you and what you feel internally.
However, if the former wins and you stop listening to the voice that comes
from within, it stops talking to you. This is when you lose yourself and seek
happiness from others complimenting your beauty or weight. You can see
examples of that in your day-to-day life. The first thing most people talk
about to each other is their physical appearance, such as, ‘You are looking
nice,’ ‘You have lost weight,’ or ‘You have put on weight.’ I feel that
meaningful conversation is fast disappearing.
 Who defines an ‘ideal’ body type? Who has the authority to say that a
particular body is perfect? I think it’s all self-created and goes back to the
immense influence of movies, fashion shows and magazine covers. One
must, however, understand that all of that is what a character demands on-
screen or it is an image that is orchestrated in print and in shows. When we
actors play a character in a movie, we are supposed to have a particular
body type. When we go off-screen, we are just what we are.
I did a movie called Size Zero a few years ago. It was about how a family
looking for a good match for their daughter and how they forced her to lose
weight to find a groom before the wedding. I think it was a great reflection
of society today and rightly points to the obsession we have with glamour.
It’s not just the media that can be blamed for this, as the choice is up to
you to use it to your advantage or disadvantage. It’s important to apply
logic to everything instead of feeling sorry for what you are not. Whether
people love you or hate you, accept you or reject you, love your body or
hate your body, at the end of the day, what matters is how their thoughts
affect you. If you get stressed about it, no one but you will have to suffer it.
You have to realize how worthy you are and start taking care of yourself. I
notice that we are so good at taking care of others, but not so much when it
comes to ourselves.
Balance in your life: I am often asked about my daily routine from the
time I wake up till the time I sleep. First off, I need everyone to know that
we actors do not have everything ready on a platter. There is no fancy
lifestyle or a chef that cooks for us all the time. My day starts with just me.
There is a choice I make every day when I wake up: Should I take things as
they come or get carried away? I have slowly started to learn what my
priorities are. On the days I choose to eat unhealthy, I take full
responsibility for that and make sure I counterbalance that the very next
day. When I have a query about nutrition, I speak to Luke. When it comes
to stress, yoga has always been my go-to activity. Health and stress are
closely linked. No matter how much emphasis you lay on nutrition, it’s of
no use if you are stressed. In contrast to that, no matter how calm and
composed you are, if your nutrition is not up to the mark, it’s again of no
use. I think balance is the keyword for everyone.
I, as a woman, take pride in the fact that today’s women are so career-
oriented. Chasing ambition is great but not at the cost of your health. It’s
important to strike a balance, for which I suggest the following lifestyle
changes. The first would be to take out at least one hour for yourself every
day, to do the things that make you truly happy. Secondly, every one should
know they are unique. Today, because of social media, men and women
want to look a certain way, which could be inspired by an actor in a movie
or an advertisement. They set these beauty and perfection standards, which,
if not met, can make them feel terrible. It’s important to realize that behind
all that beauty and perfection is a team—the cameraman, the make-up artist,
the hair stylist, the costume designer—all of whom are responsible for
making that person look flawless. It’s because of their efforts that we all
transform into somebody else when on-screen. So don’t be someone else,
and especially don’t try to be me or any other celebrity, because you are a
unique masterpiece. Accept what you are and work towards being the best
version of yourself. If you fail to do so, you are not going to move ahead.
Thirdly, make sleep and food habits your priority. Indulge in things but also
draw a line. If not, then you have to pay a price for it. Don’t push yourself
to a level where tomorrow you have to run that extra mile to take care of
yourself. Lastly, do things on a daily basis, and definitely do not look for
shortcuts, because there aren’t any.
Ask me what shortcuts I have not taken, because I feel like I’ve tried
them all. I also learned from them, so no regrets again. While I encourage
people to workout and eat healthy, I also tell them to indulge occasionally
by not cutting out things they like and aiming for balance. It’s difficult to
practise what I preach because we as actors are always running against time
for our projects. I have tried everything my profession demanded. Some
things worked and some didn’t. Today, when I sit back and reflect on my
past, I see no point in concentrating on my mistakes, because at the end of
the day I am already bearing the brunt. However, one thing that has stood
out is that shortcuts don’t work when it comes to one’s well-being. Even if
you have to take one, make sure you have the right team who can take care
of you and the side effects you may face. Otherwise, rely on consistent,
long-term lifestyle changes to get you to your health goal. There is so much
information around health and fitness all over the Internet. Awareness is
key. Don’t get so carried away with your insecurities that you just give in to
anything and everything out of desperation.
Though I am finding my way with regard to my health, I make sure I do
not repeat my mistakes. An ideal day for me would be to wake up and be
able to make the right choices. I make sure my food and nutrition is taken
care of holistically. Sleep is the next most important thing in my lifestyle. I
never used to prioritize it on account of my busy routine, but not any more.
Today, if I’m asked to work late into the night, I have a choice to say I
won’t be able to do that. If there’s no way around it, I have a choice to quit,
because now I am aware that it’s going negatively affect my life in the long
run. You always have a choice to quit a bad habit or situation. The more
excuses you give about your life, the more you must stand up to the
consequences. So I intend to prioritize and have a more balanced life now.
I’m taking baby steps now as I learn, and I know it’s not going to happen
overnight because each one of us has their own set of responsibilities.
In the twelve years of my career, I have not had much choice over what I
eat because my nutrition has always been goal-oriented. When I recently
took a break for a few months, I got some time to introspect and really pick
my meals according to what I wanted to eat. I love my work, but having
millions of eyes scrutinizing my physical appearance means that I have had
to be extra careful about my food choices. This was the case a few years
ago. Now I eat what I like, mindfully, though, and never overindulge or
deprive myself. If I am on a diet but keep craving and visualizing cakes and
pastries in my head, then I am bound to overindulge if someone offers the
same to me. The right kind of food is the one that can sustain you and keep
you happy. There is no point in eating something that you do not enjoy. So
everything goes back to balance, acceptance, love, priorities and choices.
People tend to think it’s easy for an actor to follow a healthy lifestyle, but
the fact is that every profession comes with its set of own pros and cons. If
you are comparing my life with yours, you are making excuses, in a way.
Whether it’s your sleep or your workout regime, take responsibility for your
life so that you don’t end up spending a few crucial years of your life
treating an illness or disease.
Mental wellness: One of Luke’s sayings has stuck with me, and I’m often
struck by the truth and simplicity of it. He said, health no longer means a
body without physical disease, because mental health is as important as
physical health. There are people who have everything, yet are unhappy. I
was surprised when Luke said that in his career, so far, he is yet to find
someone who is truly happy. My thinking is that one needs to accept what
they are to be happy. For instance, only if a physically challenged person
learns to accept his/her body will they be able to concentrate on other
things. If something unfortunate happens in your life, it doesn’t mean the
rest of your life is going to be bad. Just be aware of not repeating your
mistakes and move on. These are some basic things to learn, because
without that life is useless, irrespective of which gym or spa you go to.
Terms like ‘spirituality’ and ‘live in the moment’ may sound very complex,
but if you break it down, it all points to a person’s lifestyle.
I believe that whatever you think or do is driven by love, bliss and
abundance, because we as humans want to be loved, respected and taken
care of. Imagine walking up to a person who is having a very bad day and
giving him a smile. That smile is probably going to have a positive impact
on his day and he’s going to walk back home a more pleasant person to his
family. It’s like a chain reaction. If you are kind to someone, they are likely
to be kind to the people they come in touch with—and that’s how kindness
spreads. If I shout at my staff today, they are definitely going to take it out
on their husbands or wives, who, in turn, will take it out on their children.
But if we all make it a point to be kind and smile at someone while walking
on the street or just be nice and appreciate someone, then, slowly, we will
make this world a better place to live in. If someone is having a bad day,
and especially if that person is close to you, reach out and check how they
are doing. You never know what the story is at the other end. Thus,
practising love and kindness becomes one of the most important lifestyle
changes. I know nutrition and exercise is all-important, but health means
much more than that. There will be some good days and some not-so-good
days. All of us should learn to accept these highs and lows. If you sail
through life’s highs and lows and keep that intact within you and be
vulnerable, you win. This power to deal with anything is something I pray
for every day. Whenever I am too stressed, I focus on the Sufi saying my
guru Bharat often repeats: This too shall pass.
As mentioned earlier in the chapter, it is key to ‘preserve’ yourself and
maintain a balance between work and life. So many of us are so scattered
and all over the place that we never take out the time to gather ourselves.
The day I do not get the time to sit and reflect on my actions, I fail to
understand things and find myself distracted. Thus, I feel it is necessary to
include one habit into your lifestyle that allows you to spend time with
yourself, whether it’s a few minutes of meditation, prayer or something else
that makes you happy. There is no excuse for it. Sometimes, when I push
myself beyond limits and fail to listen to the inner voice that’s asking me to
slow down, I end up regretting it.
Another important life lesson for me that has had a positive impact on my
mental well-being is to never have expectations from anyone. It’s no one’s
job to be responsible for you or your work, be it your parents, brother,
sister, husband or wife. Nobody is anyone’s responsibility. I always
maintain the approach that I am responsible for myself and that any input
from anyone else is a bonus. This shift in mindset will fill you with a lot of
gratitude. When you aren’t expecting anything and someone gets you even
a glass of water, you feel so thankful. In certain situations, it’s right to
expect things in return only if you do a lot for others. Whether it is love,
respect or kindness, it has to be earned.
We all tend to get so caught up with petty issues, complaints and
expectations, that it hinders us from growing. I feel if you can’t deal with
and accept yourself, no amount of yoga and meditation will help you.
Often, when I ask people, ‘Are you a good person or a bad person?’, they
reply saying, ‘You tell me!’, to which I respond, ‘You know yourself the
best.’ I firmly believe you should be your own judge. You cannot be my
definition and neither can I be yours, but you can be your own definition
and always live up to it. If you rely on someone else to tell you who you
are, your emotions are going to yo-yo, because I may admire you as a
person today, while tomorrow I may say something that upsets you. I have
faced this myself and am not above all this. But from experience I have
learnt that it need not be this way.
It was Luke who made me realize the truth about compliments. He
explained that one day if he compliments me for what I said and how it
made him feel, it will make me feel appreciated and good about it.
However, if he appreciates my hair or handbag instead, it might make me
feel good temporarily, but there is a bigger responsibility of always having
to maintain my hair and handbag, as that’s what I was appreciated for in the
first place. It’s almost like after a point you connect with that compliment
and not with the person.
You also need to learn to be kind to yourself. Either people are overly
kind to themselves and not to others, or vice versa. I am determined to
listen to what my body is trying to say. There is no enjoyment in living life
otherwise. Even if you achieve your goals, what’s the point if you are not
the same person to the outside world as you are within the four walls of
your own home? I have been through this and I must say it’s not worth it.
The human body is so intelligent that it remembers every emotion. For
example, you know how a lemon tastes even before having it. Emotions are
stored in a similar manner. I have experienced this myself on multiple
occasions. Once someone said something that hurt me a bit, but I managed
to ignore it by keeping myself busy. That helped me forget the matter and
what the person had said. About four to five days later I woke up feeling
unhappy for no reason. I think it was because the emotion was still trapped
within me. I took this as a lesson and realized that if someone says
something that does not go down too well with me, I can always walk up to
him/her and very politely convey this. Maybe the person who hurt me was
coming from a different space and had no such intention. So there was no
point in carrying around the whole conversation in my head.
 I too have had a lot of emotional ups and downs. Now I am learning to be
more accepting. Instead of being hard on myself, I try to be more
understanding of my situation and learn why I am feeling a particular way.
If I am going through something unpleasant, I speak about it to my close
friends. I am very blessed in that regard. While the right kind of friends can
soothe your soul, the wrong ones can add more stress to your life. So it’s
important to have quality friends than a lot of friends. Luke feels the same
way about his social circle. He has close-knit friends who probably meet
once or twice a month to relax over the weekend. They do not complain
about Luke’s busy schedule and his unavailability to meet or talk. It’s the
same way with me. There are only a handful of friends who know me in and
out. I genuinely like being around people but I am not good with casual
acquaintances. For the same reason, I do not attend a lot of functions and
parties. I just can’t get acquainted with a person and move on. I don’t know
how to leave a conversation halfway. If I meet someone, I seek a connection
and want to know the person more deeply.
I think each of us should have a support system. If you do not, then it
may mean you aren’t open or trusting enough. You need to go out, meet
people, trust them, open up to them and then develop a bond. You may not
succeed each time, but that’s okay. You will eventually meet someone with
whom you can share your feelings. I find this can help manage your stress,
if yoga and exercise do not work. I love Luke’s concept of building a
sangha, which he says is a Buddhist concept. It’s like forming a community
of people who know each other closely and have the common goal of
healing. They share what’s going on in their hearts, which could even be
about their deepest fears. No one is allowed to react; they can only listen
and help. There is no empathy involved either. While everyone becomes a
listening board for each other, there is a sense of compassion that someone
is listening to you. Also, when people listen to each others’ issues, they may
realize theirs are not as big or pressing.
A sangha forms when people of similar ideologies come together. Luke
sometimes forms a group of four to five of his cancer patients, whose sole
intention is to heal. When you are so focused on your goal, you build trust
with each member. Sanghas are important because people today tend to
suppress a lot emotionally. Most of us wear a mask and portray what we
aren’t, but when we release our emotions, we feel free. When you sit with
your sangha and share your thoughts, you realize you aren’t alone. This is
when you get the strength to be yourself because you now know your true
essence.
It’s also important to be able to accept the not-so-good parts of yourself. I
remember when I felt jealousy for the first time and how I hated myself for
it. I had always been taught how bad jealousy was and that I was supposed
to be a nice person. It took more than three months for me to accept that it
is okay to be jealous. I remember Luke telling me that he felt the same way
during his first meditation experience. He didn’t quite like that experience
because it revealed a lot about him as a person. It was an eye-opener for
him because he never knew such emotions existed within. The only way to
feel at peace in such situations is to accept how you are. Everyone has a
dark and a light side. That’s how humans are and there is nothing bad about
it. All artists, including movie directors, work with emotions. Actors like me
could never have been a part of such masterpieces if emotions hadn’t had
such an impact on the artists and writers who created those works.
When you truly love your life, everything else becomes insignificant.
However, when there is a void, you look for external things to fill that void,
such as drugs. Similarly, overindulgence has become a common affliction
these days because it blinds people from the truth. Just because you do not
want to have a bad day or feel an unpleasant emotion, it doesn’t mean you
end up in a bar to drink all night. Unless you learn to accept a situation,
good or bad, you will always be in search of something that numbs your
pain. It makes sense why more and more people are turning to spirituality.
Everyone feels a void, which is nothing but a lack of love and our never-
ending ego. I pray to myself each day that no matter what I go through in
life, I shouldn’t isolate myself and start blaming the world. If I open up,
then maybe someone else will enter my life and heal it.
Why this book

It’s high time we reset our lives and fill it with love, health and acceptance.
There is no magic pill, diet, exercise programme or mantra that can help
you lose weight or prevent or heal a disease. The magic pill is a lifestyle. In
this book, we’ve tried to bring you the best lifestyle changes that have
helped thousands of people across the globe to lose weight and keep it off
and prevent and heal disease. Luke’s expertise in the field of lifestyle and
integrative medicine and my real-life experience of using lifestyle to lose
weight and maintain the fitness levels required of an actor will be applied in
this book to help people lose weight and gain health.
Luke and I hope and pray that this book touches your life in some way.
Keep smiling.
Much love,
Luke and Anushka
 Authors’ Note

You only live once, so live well!

This is one truth that we must understand and accept so it becomes easier
to lead a healthy life and walk the path of healing.
Except for people who genuinely need life-saving drugs and treatment,
you are not healthy if you are on more than one or two allopathic drugs at
any given time. Even if those drugs keep your medical parameters within
range (statins for cholesterol, medicines for diabetes, antacids for acidity,
etc.). The only thing those drugs may be doing is suppressing your
symptoms. Most likely, you still have one or several imbalances in your
body, which, medically would have been labelled a condition. The human
body is designed to heal itself; and true health is about striving to use
lifestyle and intelligence to slowly wean oneself off those medications in a
safe way. Then you will be truly healthy.
I’m assuming you’ve picked up this book because you want to shed an
extra few kilos or are struggling to maintain your weight. The reason you
have gained weight or cannot lose weight is because there is an underlying
problem with your health: physical, emotional, or both. Magic happens
when we move our focus away from just weight loss and put our full
attention on our physical and emotional health. Weight loss and great health
automatically follow.
Everyone has a unique genetic make-up, as well as a distinct body, mind,
thoughts, emotions and feelings, which are constantly changing. Then how
will fixed diets that give you detailed instructions on how much food you
need to eat and what kind of exercise you need to do work on a body and
mind that is dynamically changing? So what do you need to do instead?
Through this book, I will outline smart eating, exercise and sleep routines
based on your lifestyle, which you may tweak according to your day, mood,
sleep, environment, etc. Fixed diets don’t allow us to think, and they don’t
encourage us to change our bad behaviour, which brings on weight gain or
prevents us from losing weight. They can blind us and make us rigid. What
we need instead are smart plans that we can change according to our own
evolving selves, who we are at different moments.
As the world continues to experiment with and invent new diet and
exercise programmes, the number of frustrated people desperate to lose
weight also continues to grow. Our world, dominated by the need for instant
gratification, has given rise to various ‘fitness’ products, such as cleverly
marketed lotions, special teas and infusions, or supplements and whey
proteins, which slowly programme our minds into believing the claims that
their products can make us look like the images projected on their product
packages. But the truth is, when it comes to weight loss, disease prevention,
health and cures, we have to understand that we are all products of nature
and function according to its laws. We thrive when we live within the
biological parameters that define us. What I mean by this is, when we align
with nature the way we eat, the way we sleep, the way we think and the
way we move, then all our problems—be it arthritis, diabetes, weight gain,
weight loss or even cancer—tend to get better and possibly go away.
Over the last few years, my team and I have helped thousands of people
across the globe achieve healthy and sustainable weight loss. We have
coached, guided, inspired and helped hundreds of people get off ‘lifetime
medications’—prescribed to treat thyroid, cholesterol, high blood pressure,
diabetes and other conditions—in a safe way, with their doctors in the loop.
We have worked and been highly successful at coaching and hand-holding
people with cancer into remission, working with their bodies and minds as
they went through harsh conventional treatments, balancing or reducing the
collateral damage that the treatments caused and adding quality to their
lives, if not quantity.
We did this with one magic pill: lifestyle change.
We have helped thousands of people across the globe introduce these
changes into their lives to lose fat, keep it off, heal and prevent disease.
 This pill will help you lose weight and develop self-motivation without
stressing you out. It is also inexpensive and easily doable. You will need
just three things: consistency, discipline and, when you fail or go off track,
acceptance—that all of us fail and go off track sometimes, and that’s okay;
we just need to jump back on.
Before we get to the details of the programme, I would like to make clear
the effect that diets have on your body. I strongly recommend that you read
the New York Times article ‘After The Biggest Loser, Their Bodies Fought
to Regain Weight’ about the contestants of the weight-loss reality television
show, The Biggest Loser.1
In a nutshell, the article examines how the participants of The Biggest
Loser fared after losing significant weight on the show. Eventually, once
they returned to their lives, not only did all of them gain more weight than
they had lost, but most of them suffered from severe metabolic issues. The
story concludes that calorie-restriction diets are probably the worst diets
you can ever put yourself through.
Over the years, my work has repeatedly shown me that losing weight is
not about willpower, but about living according to the laws of nature and
the laws of your biological and physiological make-up, which we will cover
in detail in the book.
This book will recommend simple, inexpensive lifestyle changes that
thousands of people from around the globe and my clients have made over
the years to lose weight in a safe and healthy way, and keep it off. There are
no calorie-restrictive or fad diets/exercise plans, but, rather, powerful yet
simple lifestyle changes. These cover nutrition, exercise, emotional health
and sleep. The body as a whole is based on one powerful drug: lifestyle.
Before we dive into specifics, let’s look at the fundamental principles
behind weight loss, exercise, sleep, emotional health and certain common
ailments over the next five chapters. These will help you understand how
the magic weight-loss pill works.
 PART I

PREPARING FOR THE MAGIC WEIGHT-

LOSS PILL
 1
THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF WEIGHT LOSS

Calorie-restriction diets don’t work and, instead, create more problems.

Yet, shows like The Biggest Loser send the wrong message to millions of
viewers worldwide, thus encouraging the healthcare industry to produce
more ‘quick fixes’ for weight loss for people who are desperate to shed
weight in the easiest way possible.
Most people go on a diet. They try a particular one, lose some weight and
then plateau, bringing upon themselves more deprivation, work, stress of
failure and an inability to keep up.
The focus, instead, should be on finding the root cause of why you put on
weight and why you are unable to lose it. Your body’s needs are what define
you. A toxic body craves toxic food, while a healthy body craves healthier,
cleaner food. When you’re healthy, your metabolism speeds up, taste buds
function differently, you don’t feel hungry all the time and your body burns
fat more efficiently. There are certain triggers, which, if not addressed,
make your body gain weight no matter what you do. One of these is
cortisol, also known as the stress hormone, which makes you feel hungrier
than required and crave fatty and sugary foods. You also feel exhausted
easily, your metabolism slows down and it becomes impossible to burn fat.
In most diets, there’s too much emphasis on the number of calories being
consumed and used up, without focus on whether or not you have the
ability to burn fat.
When you are nutritionally starved, your body turns on the fat-storing
switch. You will be nutritionally starved if you eat the wrong food (quality
and quantity) or have a poor digestive system that cannot break down and
assimilate nutrients from your food. You stay hungry as your body yearns
nutrients that it needs to do its job to power cells, to work and to stoke the
metabolism. For example, processed foods, such as sugar, bread and even
many varieties of table salt, trick your body into thinking it’s getting certain
nutrients while your cells are actually weak and undernourished. It’s more
important to add foods that can change that equation.
That’s also why I don’t believe in restrictive diets, because they trigger
the fat switch. The body stores fat as a reserve for situations when it may
not receive adequate nutrition. Emotional and mental stress also cause the
same chemical imbalance and result in the body storing fat. Therefore,
every time you force yourself to lose weight, your body is going to want to
store fat.
You can’t take the mind out of the equation of losing weight because
stress causes a change in the body’s chemistry, which could activate your
fat switch. When I ask my patients when their weight gain or illness began,
the answer is almost always when emotional or mental stress was at its
highest: a bad relationship, anger at someone or their own selves, low self-
worth, insecurity, divorce, family problems, obsessive compulsive disorder,
need for excessive control, violence, sexual abuse or a poor sex life.
Weight loss, if done quick and in the wrong way, has serious side effects:
nutritional deficiencies, low immunity and issues that can affect the quality
of life. It can bring on disease, and mental issues as well, depression being
one of the most common. Do it the right way, and the process will change
you. It may take a little time, but it will leave you with a sustainable
lifestyle that is in your control, not a piece of paper with food and calories
chalked out that are supposed to dictate your weight loss and ability to get
slim. You need a smart food structure that adds value to your life and likes.
Weight loss is multifactorial and so is metabolism, and all those factors
have to be looked into and addressed to bring about real weight loss.
You may have noticed ads in the papers and TV that charge per kg of
weight loss or guarantee an ‘x’ amount of kg loss in a month. They will
restrict your calories, pump you up with supplements that curb appetite and
use diuretics that flush out water from your body. In the process, these will
damage your kidney function, reduce your bone density, make you look old
and haggard, lower your sex drive and affect the quality of your hair and
skin. You’re a living human being with a complex body that’s ruled by
biological, chemical and emotional equations that all need to be looked at
and harmonized. Hence, changing your lifestyle is the most inexpensive,
easy and sustainable way to lose weight, and prevent and cure disease. We
need to change the habit of going on a diet to lose weight.
The vision of this book is to share the lifestyles that people have adopted
and experienced the most impactful and positive results from when it came
to losing weight, and keeping it off, without the use of restrictive diets,
punishing workouts and feelings of deprivation and starvation. In fact, all
those who used lifestyle changes to lose weight and change their health
enjoyed the journey, and continue to do so.
I want each and every reader to know that the lifestyle changes you read
about in this book, although completely focused on weight loss, if practised
and developed into habits, come with the beneficial side effects of stronger
immunity, healthier skin (and hair and nails), enhanced stamina, improved
endurance, better sleep quality and a calmer mind.
I’m also going to explain how to change your lifestyle to reverse or heal
diabetes, cholesterol, arthritis, thyroid and digestion issues, as these
ailments can hamper weight loss. Many of us live under the illusion that
most diseases cannot be reversed and that medications are for life, whereas
the fact is that there are many who have successfully weaned themselves off
their medications and reversed their health condition after taking complete
responsibility of their health and changing lifestyles.
Diets don’t work. Smart eating habits do. The right amount of exercise
that suits your body type, done the right way and for the right amount of
time works. Quality sleep works. And a mind that is constantly emotionally
detoxified works.
Think about it. Go down memory lane, close your eyes and reflect on
your childhood. Most likely, you will find that the time you started putting
on weight or falling sick was when something in your lifestyle changed.
Maybe you moved to college and started eating junk food rather than home-
cooked food (considering the food that you grew up on did not make you
sick or fat), or there was a change in career, or a stressful relationship, or a
financial issue. Or peer pressure brought about a change in the way you ate,
slept, moved, thought and lived. That’s when that weight started creeping
on or your immunity started failing. You may have jumped on to a fad diet
that was restrictive or a fad exercise programme that punished your body
with intensive workouts.
So if a lifestyle change brought on the weight, we need to think back and
figure out what changes you made at that point.
Remember, everyone’s body, mind and situation are different, and what
may work for some may not work for another. This book will allow you to
choose the changes that you think you need to add to your life. You may be
wondering, ‘Are these lifestyle changes difficult?’ The answer is No. In
fact, it’s just the opposite.
 2
BALANCED NUTRITION

The body requires balance in all of its billions of cells, and in its chemical,
biological, physiological and hormonal functions. When you adopt high-
protein, low-carb or ketogenic diets, or any other such diet, you create an
imbalance in the body. You may lose some weight initially, because these
are extreme and work on the principle of forcing the body to lose weight,
but then you put all of it, and sometimes much more, back on. Along with
losing that initial weight, you also lose crucial vitamins and minerals that
are critical to the functioning and balance of cells in the body, leading to
malnutrition. This further impacts immunity, the body’s first and last line of
defence, and creates an environment in the body that makes weight loss a
constant and never-ending struggle. Some of the above diets may be
necessary to treat certain aliments and diseases, but are never appropriate
for weight loss. What you need instead is a balanced quantity of nutrients to
be digested, assimilated and absorbed into the blood and cells to build a
body that can lose weight and build up health. You can never force the body
to lose weight; you need to create an environment that ‘allows’ it to lose
weight. Even a slight deficiency of one vitamin or trace mineral can prevent
weight loss from happening or create a hormonal imbalance, which brings
me to the interesting part of how weight loss really happens and what it
really is.
Hormonal balance

Losing weight is about having the right hormonal balance and the right
chemistry between cells. When you eat the wrong food, or have toxins, or
experience stress, it disrupts communication between cells and the
hormonal balance and several other functions, activating fat storage in the
cells.
To address weight loss, we won’t just look at the food you are eating—
although that’s important, but not enough. We have to look at the problem
from all angles: the mind—emotions, stress, negative thoughts—and the
physical body and what’s going on inside it. A lot of this is determined by
the hormones in your body. The following are key hormones that are
responsible for many bodily functions.
Let’s talk about stress, one of the main causes of disease, an obstacle in
the weight-loss process and one of the main reasons for fat and weight gain.
There are two kinds of stress—acute and chronic. Imagine you are sitting in
a closed room and I set a tiger loose in it. There are exactly two possibilities
of how you will react. You will either try to flee, or prepare to fight. This is
known as the ‘fight or flight’ response. This is the human body’s natural
mechanism to handle stressful situations. Both these actions require large
amounts of adrenaline to be produced for instant energy. The adrenal glands
produce the following hormones:

Epinephrine: Another name for adrenaline. This hormone responds rapidly to stress by
increasing your heart rate and rushing blood to the brain and muscles in your body. It also
rapidly spikes your blood-sugar level by converting glycogen to glucose in the liver.
Glycogen is the form in which the liver stores glucose.
Norepinephrine: Commonly known as noradrenaline, this hormone works with
epinephrine to respond to stress. It can cause vasoconstriction, that is, the narrowing of
blood vessels, which can result in high blood pressure.

The adrenal gland also produces cortisol, which regulates how the body
converts fats, proteins, and carbohydrates into energy. It also helps regulate
blood pressure and cardiovascular function. Cortisol works with another
hormone called corticosterone to regulate immune response and suppress
inflammatory reactions.
Cortisol also has a direct impact on insulin production. What’s the first
thing that comes to your mind when you read the term ‘insulin’? It’s
diabetes, isn’t it? That’s because we know that insulin regulates blood-sugar
levels. But that’s where our thinking is limited and therefore we have a one-
pronged approach to diabetes. Insulin has many more functions. Let’s
understand them in the simplest way possible, for when you understand
what else insulin does and how it works, you will begin to believe that there
is a cure for diabetes and that high levels of chronic stress prevent you from
losing weight.
Insulin is called a storage hormone because it helps the body store energy
in adipose tissues, or fat cells. It also helps in the synthesis of amino acids
from protein for muscle-building. The reason insulin is linked to diabetes so
often is because it uses sugar in the blood to store it in the muscles and liver
as glycogen. In cases of acute or very small amounts of stress, fat cells
release small amounts of energy, with no collateral damage to the body, but
when you undergo chronic and elevated levels of stress, the muscles in the
body and heart require large amounts of this energy really quickly to sustain
the body’s movements, vital organ functions and coping mechanisms in
reaction to stress.
When the cortisol level in the body rises rapidly and stays elevated, the
cells receive a signal to stop responding to the storage effects of insulin.
The body then goes into no-more-energy-storage mode.
Doctor Shawn Talbott, a well-known scientist and expert in metabolism,
weight loss, sports nutrition and human performance, beautifully explains it
in his book Cortisol Connection.
‘When cells stop responding to insulin, they are able to switch from a
storage (anabolic/building) mode to a secretion (catabolic/breakdown)
mode—so fat cells dump more fat into the system, liver cells crank out
more glucose and muscle cells allow their protein to be broken down to
supply amino acids (for conversion into even more sugar by the liver). This
is all fine—assuming it occurs infrequently and for only a short period of
time . . . chronic stress can lead to a condition known as insulin resistance
and predispose a person to the development of full-blown diabetes.’1
Even the thought of food and concern about eating can increase stress
levels.
You will also gain weight and fat, and find it impossible to lose it when
your human growth hormone (HGH), DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone) and
testosterone levels are on the lower side. DHEA is a steroid hormone
secreted by adrenal glands which is then converted to other hormones,
including sex hormones. This is why athletes who put themselves through
extreme training, which is stressful for the body, need to supplement with
testosterone and HGH shots (which have their share of side effects in the
long run).
Another effect of cortisol rapidly rising and staying elevated is that the
level of the hormone thyroxine falls steadily. When thyroxine is low, you
are treated as a patient of hypothyroidism. These patients are put on
medication with the statement ‘you need to be on these medicines for life’,
which most doctors cannot explain; most also make no mention of the side
effects of popping these medicines every morning. Patients feel safe when
test results a month later show that their TSH levels are within range. This
blinds them to the fact that only their symptom is being treated, and the
underlying root cause, which is almost always chronic and emotional stress,
is never addressed, slowly leading to more problems and more medication
for other ailments and conditions that the unaddressed stress is causing.
This amazing piece by Dr Talbott succinctly summarizes the effects of
chronic stress on our bodies.
‘During periods of chronic stress, levels of both cortisol and insulin rise
and together send a potent signal to fat cells to store as much fat as possible.
They also signal fat cells to hold on to their fat stores—so stress can
actually reduce the ability of the body to release fat from its stores to use for
energy. In terms of weight gain and obesity, the link between cortisol and
deranged metabolism is seen in many ways.’2
Consider this. You’ve had a stressful day. You woke up late, ate a hurried
breakfast, watched some negative media coverage, read negative news in
the papers, reached late to work, had an argument with your boss, went on
to address a whole load of emails, missed your lunch break, had a fight over
the phone with your spouse, loaded up on coffee because your energy levels
were rock bottom, sat in traffic for over two hours and reached home tired
and drained. What happens if you do a blood test now? Your blood pressure,
blood-sugar and cholesterol levels will be high, and thyroxine will be on the
lower side. So do you need a pill for all these conditions? No, all these
indications are your body’s natural way of adapting to the stress you went
through. If you reach home, have a shower, settle down, eat a hot tasty
meal, listen to soothing music, play with your child, read a book and make
love, those levels will all come back within range.
If we choose to opt for the easy option of taking pills out of fear and
ignorance of the root cause, we assume a symptomatic approach. The
allopathic drugs that go through the liver increase the toxic burden in the
body, and more toxins mean more fat and more struggle to lose weight. This
brings me to the next step of balanced nutrition: detoxification.

Detoxification

I’m not talking about detox spas, wellness centres and pills. These are
temporary fixes and may not look at the body as a whole. I’m talking about
detoxification in a holistic way. The human body has five main eliminatory
organs or parts—the lungs, skin, kidneys, liver and colon. If any of these
have an imbalance or a malfunction, it causes medical ailments or prevents
the healing of an already sick body. Helping the body remove toxins is of
prime importance.
We are swimming in a world of toxins. Babies are born with their
umbilical cords showing traces of over 300 toxins. The toxins are present in
contaminated and pesticide-sprayed produce, pollution, water, processed
food, chemicals in plastic, cosmetics, soap, toothpaste, baby milk, infant
milk powder and formula, allopathic drugs, heavy metals in Ayurvedic
formulations and certain nutraceuticals, processed oils used for cooking,
non-stick and Teflon-coated cookware, plastic toys, detergents, cleaning
supplies . . . I could go on and on and depress you more.
The human body was never designed to handle all this, so we need to
help the liver, lungs, skin, colon and kidneys to constantly detoxify, else
they will get sluggish and then you will have anything from as small as a
headache or a pimple to skin issues, hair issues, mental-health problems,
digestion issues, cancer, organ failure—and piling on fat and the struggle to
lose it.
Picture this. Every one of the billions of cells in your body is covered
with a thin permeable layer of fat to protect the nucleus, or the inside of the
cell. Everything starts or originates from a cell. You were born from a cell.
Your DNA, genes, hair and skin all have an important relationship with
your cells. Hence the nucleus or the inside of the cell needs to be protected
every second.
So the thin layer of fat has the job of protecting the cell from toxins
entering it. The more toxins you have in your body, the more fat the body
will store to protect the cells. Now this is not normal, but it’s the defence
mechanism of the human body to protect and survive. When this continues,
it disrupts communication between cells, because they start coating
themselves with the wrong fats. When communication is disrupted between
cells, it results in hormonal imbalance. Now picture all this happening in
your body, and on the other hand you putting yourself through diets,
restrictive food measures and intensive exercise in the hope that it will burn
the fat. All you need to do is help your body reduce and eliminate these
toxins and then allow the body to lose weight. You hold on to the extra
weight because you have created an environment in your body that allows it
to. This, in turn, can have a negative impact on your mind and emotional
health.
When you detox, you reset your body. You clean your liver, your energy
levels soar, the fat burn increases and you feel good about yourself. You
engage in deep breathing, which is a powerful way to detoxify the lungs.
You feel clear and energetic in your mind and body. You sweat, you feel
lighter and cleaner because sweat pulls out certain toxins and metals from
your body. Your skin and hair look better, you lose weight, headaches and
migraines disappear and immunity is boosted.
Ever wondered why some medicines make you put on weight? Because
the side effect of many medicines not taken or handled the right way causes
toxicity in the human body. In the case of cancer patients, harsh treatments
like chemotherapy make you lose weight rapidly because the cytotoxins
from the chemo not only cause toxic overload but also affect assimilation
and absorption of nutrients from the food into the cells, resulting in
malnutrition and weight loss.
Toxins steadily pile up over the years in our body due to wrong dietary
choices, a sedentary lifestyle, negative feelings like worry, anger,
resentment, guilt, jealousy, nervous exhaustion and other triggers, all of
which impact our cellular health, which, in turn, impacts everything else. In
a healthy body, these waste materials and toxins will be eliminated or
handled by the liver, kidneys, lungs, skin and colon or the body’s immunity.
In a diseased or imbalanced body, elimination is compromised as the
eliminatory exits of the human body are blocked.
An example of this happening is the occurrence of gallstones, which
continue to plague thousands of people worldwide. The most common
advice in case of frequent occurrence of stones is to remove the ‘useless’
gall bladder, as termed by many in the medical community. Yes, gall
bladders may need to be removed in many, but not most, cases of
gallstones, especially when they are small. The very fact that the gall
bladder has accumulated gallstones is an indication of wrong nutrition and
an improper lifestyle. The right course of action is to help the body detoxify
and flush out the stones naturally. When they are flushed out, your liver is
reset. Cholesterol levels fall in place, fat breaks down more efficiently and
metabolism is enhanced. Remove the gall bladder for something as small as
this and the patient becomes a candidate for diabetes later on and suffers
from indigestion issues. Gall bladders need to be removed on medical
advice when the stones are large, are blocking the bile duct and/or when the
gall bladder is twisted or heavily distended, or infected.
 Detoxification is done via sweating, deep breathing or pranayama, eating
the right liver-cleansing and kidney-cleansing fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds
and spices. Every day, there are easy, inexpensive things you can do to
detoxify. I will be sharing a detox plan for each of the organs at the end of
this book for you to try, of course, after consulting your medical adviser, as
all detoxes may not support certain diseases, allergies or aliments.
Sometimes, a detox brings out the worst in your body and then the magical
healing begins. It’s like a pimple, it needs to grow to its full size before it
bursts and heals. You may experience the worst bouts of diarrhoea or
vomiting before you heal, just like you’ll have a runny nose before you heal
a congested chest.

Eating the right food

We need to eat more, not less; but it has to be the right kind of food, in
balance, and just enough to suit our body requirements. Your cells are
looking out for the nutrients, vitamins and minerals they need all the time,
to carry out hundreds of chemical, biological and physiological functions in
the body. Even if there is a minor deficiency, your cells will scream out for
them. Cravings in most cases are nothing but cells screaming out for what
they need, which we mistake for hunger and unfortunately end up eating
more of the wrong stuff.
Restrictive diets deprive the body of key nutrients. That’s why your hair,
the lustre of your skin, your energy and immunity also tend to get affected.
The moment you return to a normal diet, you put that weight back on. You
will lose weight when you consume fewer calories, but that’s a quick fix
and the side effect is worse health. We need to eat more of the right food,
the right way. What is required to burn fat is energy, which comes from
good-quality food. Processed and junk food gives you quick and poor-
quality energy, not the kind that is required to burn fat and stoke
metabolism. To lose weight, you eat more nutrient-dense foods and ensure
your cells are getting everything they need to keep your hormones in
balance and functioning at the optimum level.
 So what should you eat?
A balanced diet consists of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, grains,
lentils/legumes; and dairy, meat, fish and eggs for people who choose to be
non-vegan.
Ideally, half the food you consume in a day should be cooked and the
other half should be raw. Fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouts all
count as raw food.
An increasing number of people are facing digestive disorders today.
Most often, they take antacids and other allopathic medicines for quick
relief, but never get to the root cause and lifestyle habit that’s causing it in
the first place. Overuse of antacids causes constipation, diarrhoea, muscle
weakness, twitching, dependency, infections, slow breathing, lowered
immunity and an imbalance and depletion of certain digestive enzymes.
Antacids alter the pH levels in the stomach, providing relief but also
impacts digestion. Food needs stomach acids to be digested, but an alkaline
shift changes this balance.
More important is the impact on digestive enzymes. Enzymes are
required to digest and assimilate food, and today so many of us have
depleted enzymes with our choice of food and lifestyle. The way to
replenish them is by eating raw food. Every time you eat a fruit, soaked
nuts and seeds, sprouts or raw vegetables, you provide your body with these
much-needed enzymes.
The very fact that a person needs a constant intake of antacids is
biofeedback from the body that he or she is facing chronic acidity, which
does not allow weight loss. Cells have to have the right pH and alkaline
ratio for this to happen. Even oxygen cannot reach acidic cells or mediums
efficiently, which then causes imbalance.
When you add raw food to your daily diet, you not only provide the body
with enzymes, but also help it detoxify naturally, as the enzymes help the
proper breakdown and assimilation of food, with the least waste and acids.
So important are these enzymes that certain cancers, such as pancreatic and
stomach cancers and even some colon cancers, tend to get better when
enzymes are enhanced and present in larger quantities in the patient’s body,
because without them, nutrients cannot be processed, assimilated and
absorbed into the cells, and that impacts immunity, the only factor that can
prevent and heal.

Chewing

Indigestion, flatulence, acidity and bloating are all biofeedback from your
body that there is an imbalance caused by the wrong food or lifestyle. In
fact, most cases of the above are easy to fix when we understand how it
works and why it happens. In our gut, we have good and bad bacteria. If the
proportion is wrong, we cannot assimilate food the right way, which leads
to bloating.
Would you believe me if I said you could enjoy a bit of dessert and it
would not impact your weight? If I told you that snacking on a cookie once
in a while would not impact your weight goals? If I told you that you could
eat rice/roti/bread at lunch and dinner, and it would not impact your weight
or health? It’s true. It all depends on how you chew your food.
Our stomach produces sufficient acid to melt down a razor blade. Such is
the power of our digestive system. So an ice cream, chocolate bar or cookie
does not cause too much trouble if eaten in moderation. The human body is
made to digest the hardest of foods, able to break down everything from red
meat to cellulose in vegetables, which is extremely difficult to break down
(this is one reason why vegetarians suffer from more flatulence than non-
vegetarians), and that dessert.
The secret lies in chewing. It starts the process of digesting carbohydrates
and fat in the mouth. As the food is broken down into smaller, predigested
particles, it travel down your oesophagus into the stomach more easily. If
we skip the process of chewing, it can give rise to issues like acidity,
bloating, belching and flatulence, and compromise digestion. Saliva mixes
with the small bits our teeth tear the food into, further softening them. The
more you chew, the more saliva gets produced, which contains enzymes
that break down fats and carbs.
 As the digestion starts in your mouth, by the time your food reaches your
stomach, it’s already processed by enzymes, and your stomach has no issues
completing the assimilation/digestion process. It also ensures you feel light,
full for a longer period of time and do not experience flatulence or
indigestion. You not only learn to savour your food, but your body also
absorbs all its goodness. You tend to eat exactly the amount your body
needs to maintain or arrive at a healthy weight.
Imagine all the times you’ve gobbled down your food. You’ve had
undigested chunks sitting in your stomach, which then has to produce more
acid to digest these bigger chunks, giving rise to gas. Chances are that most
of your food will get converted to fat, because whatever food is not digested
gets converted into fat or toxic waste.
So enjoy that dessert. Eat it slowly, enjoy it, and over time you will learn
not to abuse it, and eat it without guilt.
The size of the human stomach is about the size of your fist closed,
though it can expand to hold more food/water. Remember this the next time
you fill your plate.

Acidity

Most people have experienced acidity at some point, and some continue to
experience it on a daily basis. If you want to enhance your health, build
strong immunity and lose weight without struggling, you must aim to cure
chronic acidity.
Acidity is also known as heartburn and usually makes you feel gassy and
bloated. A highly acidic body is a breeding ground for disease and a huge
obstacle to weight loss. Also, don’t get used to pills to solve acidity. In the
long run, this does more harm than good because dependency on any drug
will have side effects.
A lifestyle change is the only natural solution to acidity and heartburn. If
you don’t pay attention to this, it can lead to stomach ulcers, which is the
last thing you want. Ulcers are painful, and will require you to change your
eating habits and lifestyle completely.
 The stomach produces acid to digest food, and a normal-sized meal takes
2–3 hours to digest. After, if you have more food in your stomach, it will
naturally produce more acid. And once your stomach is empty, the acid will
have nothing to work on and will eat into your stomach lining. This reaction
causes acidity or pain below your breastbone, above your stomach.
As this condition worsens, sometimes you get acid re-flux, which is
nothing but your body throwing all this stuff up your food pipe.
The solution? Eat every 3 hours and don’t skip meals. Make a special
effort to not overeat, as this is another factor that gives rise to severe and
chronic acidity.
Sometimes very spicy food and, in most cases, all junk food doesn’t react
well with stomach acid, thus leading to gas and bloating. Choose food
wisely. Be aware of what reacts with your body and moderate those items.
Eating when you are stressed or angry can also increase acidity and
indigestion. This is because cortisol impacts your digestion. So always eat
when you are calm and happy; avoid working lunches, or eating meals in
front of the TV. Guilt also raises cortisol, which impacts digestion and
switches on the ‘stress mode’ button, which is definitely not good for your
weight.
A few quick remedies when you do experience this:

Try to avoid spicy food.

When you feel acidity setting in, drink cold milk.
Suck on a piece of clove when you feel the burn.
Have a glass of warm water and lemon juice after a meal.
Munch on a few almonds if the burn persists.
Include 1 banana per day in your diet (2 if the burn is too much).
Eat cucumber in salads or by itself.
Have watermelon whole instead of as a juice.
Chew sugar-free gum (ideal to carry on flights).
Drink 2.5–3 litres of water every day or the amount recommended by
your doctor if you have any underlying condition.
Add basil to soups, salads and grills.
My favourite remedy for acidity is lemon water. Lemon is naturally acidic,
but the moment it mixes with saliva, it becomes highly alkaline. Lemon
water can give you more relief than an antacid, but I must mention here that
many people are allergic to lemon, so please see what suits you. Also, if you
consume too much, it can damage your enamel, so use a straw if you are
having it often. A whole raw cucumber or carrot works well too to alleviate
the symptoms.
A few other tips and points to keep in mind to battle this condition:

Don’t keep gaps of more than 3–3.5 hours between main meals.
Eat slowly, chew your food and don’t overeat.
Don’t eat with guilt. Eat with love and joy, even if the food is not to
your liking.
Don’t overdo caffeine, alcohol and spicy food.
Many medications cause acidity as a side effect, especially antibiotics.
Make sure you take a good probiotic and vitamin B-complex
supplements as antibiotics wipe out the good bacteria and B vitamins.
Add raw food to your diet.
Water should be consumed 15–30 minutes before your meal, nothing
during and 30 minutes after your meal.
Overusing antacids can actually make you more acidic in the long run.
Keep a good time gap between dinner and bedtime. Going to sleep
with undigested food will wreak havoc on your digestion.

Protein

Too many people consume more protein than required in the hope of losing
weight or building lean muscle. Protein from food when ingested is broken
down into amino acids. It is the amino acids that do the magic, right from
being the building blocks in the human body to forming muscle, carrying
out repairs, and providing energy. But when you overdo it by eating the
wrong proteins, it doesn’t break down into the essential amino acids, and
you see no result. Once protein is ingested, many chemical reactions in the
digestive tracts break down the protein into amino acids. If there is any
interference with the normal digestive process, there will be improper and
incomplete protein digestion or breakdown, which will lead to bloating, gas
and even acidity.
Eggs are a complete protein and I still wonder why people separate the
yolk from the white. For vegetarians, the combination of brown rice or
white rice with rajma (kidney beans) is a complete protein. You get high-
quality, but not high-quantity, protein from sources such as green peas,
okra, nuts, seeds, grains, millets, lentils, legumes and fruits. Unless you’re
training for a sport or professionally, focus on more quality protein from
wholesome food and aim to create a body with a fine-tuned digestive
system. You will find that less is more when it comes to the consumption of
protein.
Excess protein, which is not used, makes the body acidic. Plus, the
kidneys have to work overtime to flush out the excess material. To lose
weight, you need approximately between 0.8 and 1 g of protein per kg of
your body weight. If you are training for a sport, it increases, but then so
does your overall nutrition intake. Building a toned body, lean mass and
muscle is more about human growth hormones and testosterone and less
about large quantities of protein. No matter how much protein you
consume, if you are not stimulating the production of HGH and
testosterone, the protein will be useless. Build lean muscle to lose weight
and do it by stimulating the right hormones, rather than overeating protein,
which can even make you gain weight.
My natural protein shake consists of sattu (roasted gram flour). It has a
fantastic composition, and is light and easy for the body to absorb,
especially for Stage 4 cancer patients. I first started incorporating this into
my diet a few years ago when I was in Kolkata to talk at a Young
Presidents’ Organization event. One of the participants spoke about a
beverage made from sattu that the locals drink, which keeps them healthy
and high on energy through the hot summer months.
The next morning I met with a couple that spoke of the same drink and
were kind enough to make me a glass of delicious sattu with coriander and
black salt.
This drink has been used in north India by many generations as a natural
cure for several diseases as well as a nutrient-dense staple food. I picked up
several packets to bring back with me.
I like to take a product apart, study and research it in detail, test it in labs
for authenticity and nutritional values, and then share it with everyone I can
after using it myself.
Sattu is the equivalent of a whey protein shake. Made of roasted channa
(gram) flour, this composition is one of the highest sources of vegetarian
protein and easily absorbed by the body.
About 60 g (4 tablespoons) of this roasted flour will give you 19.7 g of
high-quality protein, along with calcium and magnesium (a fantastic
combination as magnesium helps calcium get absorbed in the body). This
makes it excellent for bone health, and prevention and treatment of
osteoporosis. Sattu is also a great source of iron, eliminating the use of iron
supplements, which can sometimes be toxic for the liver and cause
constipation. The fibre in this flour cleans out the colon and stomach,
prevents and cures constipation and aids fat loss and energy levels. Sattu
also comes with the additional benefit of being excellent for sexual health.
You might be thinking that sattu causes a lot of gas, just like channa
(garbanzo beans/chickpeas). In fact, it has just the opposite effect.
For elderly, ill and bed-ridden people, especially those recovering from a
serious disease or surgery, sattu will build strength and muscle mass rapidly.
I drink 4 tablespoons with water or chaas (buttermilk). Sometimes I add
pepper, roasted cumin (jeera), lemon or cinnamon. I consume 20 g of
protein in one go this way. I have one glass in the morning and one post-
workout, and sometimes even another as a mid-evening snack.
It makes me feel lighter, more toned, less bloated (some whey proteins
cause temporary bloating) and I know what is in the glass, unlike the
numerous ingredients mentioned on the jar of a whey protein. In Kolkata,
they even add jaggery to sattu to make it sweet. It’s an excellent summer
drink and extremely cooling for the body. I recommend you blend it as
lumps may form if not stirred well.
 The best part is that it’s extremely economical, with 100 g costing about
Rs 20.
I have also learnt that in some places in north India, sattu is made using
other gram and buckwheat, which is also okay if it suits your digestion.

Fat

Fat doesn’t make you fat. In fact, the good fats help you burn fat and help
with the production and balance of hormones. In actuality, it is the wrong
chemistry between cells and the consumption of wrong fats consumed, or
the overconsumption of macronutrients like carbohydrates, fats and
proteins, which lead to weight gain.
Certain fats are essential. Aside from water, our body is mostly
comprised of fat; 60 per cent of our brain is fat. Every cell in our body is
covered with a lining of fat. The wrong type disrupts communication
between cells and hormones, which can starve cells of the right nutrients,
making you hungrier and prone to storing more fat.
Essential fats are ones that are not man-made. The permeable layer that
allows for the most efficient communication between hormones and cells is
like the right oil for your car engine. When the machine is properly oiled,
hormones reduce the fat, your blood sugar stabilizes, you’re not hungry or
exhausted all the time or craving junk food, you have more energy and are
in a better frame of mind.
You can get all the right fat you need from nuts and seeds (unsalted), desi
ghee and my favourite fat, which doesn’t just boost immunity but also helps
burn belly fat: raw virgin coconut oil.

Go back to your staples

What was your staple diet when you were growing up? What was your
parents’ staple diet? If it didn’t make you lethargic or overweight, that’s
exactly what your diet should be today. If you reflect, you’ll find that every
time your intake of outside food increased or junk food seemed to be the
easiest and most economical food, or you had less or no time for exercise
and you slept fewer hours than necessary, your health and weight changed.
And, of course, a large percentage of us were overfed by our mothers while
growing up, a sweet yet dangerous practice, especially in India.
There is so much wisdom in the way our staple diets are structured,
especially in India. From the fresh produce to the spices and combinations,
everything has a scientific explanation for being consumed. Along the way,
eating habits have changed, with pure jaggery being replaced by white
refined sugar, and pure nut- or seed-pressed oils such as coconut, peanut,
mustard and sesame replaced by highly refined dangerous oils. We
incorrectly choose oils such as olive oil, which has the lowest smoking
point, to cook Indian food, which requires a higher smoking point and thus
causes toxicity and free radicals in the body.
We tend to blame our staples—rice, wheat, curries and lentils—and
choose cuisines that our body has never been used to from the time we were
born. The Mediterranean diet is an excellent diet, but primarily for those
living in the Mediterranean region. A well-prepared Indian staple meal is
the best for Indians. Rice, millets, lentils, beans, fresh meat, fish, spices,
chutneys, pickles, honey, jaggery, fermented food like dosas and idlis,
kanjis, healing beverages like jaljeera, kadhas, nutrient-rich curries, pure
oils, raw nuts, seeds, fresh fruit and dry fruits—India has it all. Across states
in India, you find so much wisdom, science and medicinal value in most
food preparations and combinations. India has its shares of desserts, deep-
fried sweets, and fried salty snacks, but moderation along with an active
lifestyle will not let these become a problem. The issues arise when we
overeat such food.
Later in this book, you will see how going back to the staples is one of
the most powerful and effective lifestyle changes you can make.

Spices

Most spices act like natural medicines and metabolism boosters when
ingested. From helping with digestion to fighting inflammation, the
antimicrobial, antiseptic and anti-fungal properties can banish bloating and
acidity. Spices, ranging from turmeric, black pepper and jeera (cumin) to
ajwain (bishop’s weed) and chilli powder, all have health benefits that
contribute indirectly but surely to weight loss and health enhancement.
Part of balanced nutrition also depends on the way we eat food. No
matter how healthy the food is, if you overeat it, you create imbalance in
the body and gain weight. You can overeat salad every day and still have a
weight problem. The same is true of spices as well, which is why being
heavy-handed with them will not help or accelerate weight loss beyond a
point. The body only uses what it needs, and stores anything extra as fat,
causing imbalance in digestion and hormonal activity. Extra food puts stress
on the digestive system and uses up unnecessary energy, which should
otherwise be used for several other functions in the body. It is estimated that
today’s lifestyles, eating habits and dietary choices result in the digestive
system using approximately 75 per cent of the energy through the day. That
leaves you with just about 25 per cent energy for everything else—the
hundreds of other reactions and functions of the human body, not
considering the energy used up by chronic stress and negative emotions. No
wonder so many people are constantly fatigued. The irony is that we keep
binging more, thinking that food will bring us more energy.
Energy is everything: food, water, our thoughts. You need to ensure that
this energy is managed well, because it is required to burn fat, prevent
disease and heal. How will restrictive diets ever work when they function
on the principle of less energy? In fact, those diets induce so much stress
that it again drains energy, making the achievement of the desired results
frustrating.

Your gut bacteria and weight loss

More and more studies are discovering the connection between chronic
illness, the inability to lose weight and gut-bacteria health. Links have been
found between the health of your gut and bloating, irritable bowel
syndrome (IBS), leaky gut syndrome, autism, diabetes, autoimmune
disorders, cancer, fibromyalgia, depression, asthma, eczema, cardiovascular
disease, headaches and migraines, skin problems, hair fall and allergies.
Approximately 75 per cent to 85 per cent of your immunity starts in the
gut, including detoxification, inflammation and neurotransmitter activities.
In the healing and treatment of almost all my patients, I never fail to be
amazed at how working on improving their gut health as a first treatment
measure boosts immunity. The results can be seen not just in medical
reports but also in the way they feel.
Gut health includes communication between your gut, stomach and brain.
You rarely link this with the quality of hair, skin, the inability to lose
weight, flatulence, bloating, acidity, indigestion, diabetes, cardiovascular
problems, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, etc. The answer doesn’t lie in
intensive workout programmes and restrictive diet practices.
Anything that affects your gut health affects your brain. Just think about
all the food that you’re eating every single day. It goes through our stomach
and intestines. The walls of the intestines are like a fishing net with very
small holes. This net allows all the nutrients from the food that you eat to
pass through that fishnet into your blood, which carries those nutrients
along with oxygen to all those billions of cells in your body. When you eat
the wrong food or eat too fast, you have too much acid in your stomach. Or
if you don’t chew your food enough, it doesn’t get digested well enough.
You send these large particles of food down to your intestine, where they
poke holes in that fish net that we spoke about. Those small holes become
bigger and then you have things like protein molecules and toxins entering
your bloodstream. Those little holes in the fishnet also become larger
because of inflammation, birth-control pills, non-steroidal, anti-
inflammatory drugs (such as antacids and painkillers), excess caffeine, too
much refined or processed sugar and toxins. Your immune system launches
an attack on all those particles in the blood, which over time can lead to
autoimmune diseases like Hashimoto’s, type 1 diabetes, inflammation,
rheumatoid arthritis and leaky gut syndrome.
Your gut has over a hundred trillion different microbes and bacteria, both
good and bad. You need a perfect ratio of good and bad bacteria because it
helps assimilate the nutrients from the food that you eat. Excess caffeine,
processed food, sugar, eating too fast, stress, high cortisol levels,
antibiotics, painkillers, antacid medication, birth-control pills, etc., decrease
the number of good bacteria. When you have too much bad bacteria, your
tongue will have a thick white coating on it, and you may have Candida or
yeast or infections in your gut. Losing weight then becomes a struggle,
making you change your nutritionist and doctor, trying new pills and going
to spas, while all you need to do is enhance your gut health.
Gut health also has an impact on your state of mind. When patients suffer
from depression, doctors prescribe antidepressants, which improve
secretion of serotonin, also called the happy hormone. The effect of
antidepressants is only temporary. This is because serotonin is synthesized
in the intestine. If you have problems with your gut, your body cannot
produce the hormone properly. So you resort to an antidepressant
medication, where, in many cases, the patient needs to work on gut health.
When I treat my cancer patients, the first thing I do is help solve their gut
issues, as I’m seeking a root-cause cure. I am not against medication, but I
am against the fact that it’s handed out like candy today. So many people
are prescribed strong antibiotic courses and not even asked to take probiotic
or B-complex along with it, the very two things that antibiotics deplete, and
create an improper ratio of good and bad bacteria. This is why medication
can cause muscle cramps, heaviness in the abdomen and bloating.
However, many of us require medication to treat the diseases we have. In
such cases, you also have to work to manage the collateral damage of those
drugs or treatments, be it chemo, radiation or antibiotics. So how do you
keep your gut clean? As intelligent and complicated as the human body is,
everything in it is simple and abides by the laws of nature. The first step is
to reduce toxicity in the body. A lot of things are not in control, such as the
air we breathe, the pollution and contamination in food, which is why we
detoxify regularly. All of you who have been following me on Facebook
and watching my videos will understand the importance of detoxification.
We help our body reduce toxic overload through clean eating, regular
detoxes, fasting, fruit-until-lunch diets, exercise, sweating and the right
quantity of water.
The second step is to introduce probiotics into your diet. Probiotics are
found in kefir, fermented foods, high-quality supplements and yoghurt. The
third essential thing we need is some proportion of raw food in our diet
because we get digestive enzymes and good bacteria from it. Apart from
this, certain things also need to be avoided to maintain good gut health.
White sugar is a poison you have to be careful of, because the body doesn’t
know how to process it. It also wipes out all the good bacteria from your
gut. Avoid excess caffeine from tea or coffee, as it creates inflammation in
the gut. If you’re having caffeine, make sure that you drink sufficient water
because it acts as a diuretic. Also keep an eye on your usage of antibiotics,
because the damage that antibiotics cause can be irreversible.
Stress, too, has a direct impact on your gut health, which is why when
you’re nervous, you feel butterflies in your stomach. That’s nothing but
your gut sending communication to your brain. In fact, you have a second
brain in your gut called the enteric nervous system (ENS). All cravings
could just be an unhealthy gut communicating with your brain in the wrong
language.

Inflammation and how it impacts weight loss

Inflammation is the body’s natural response to injury, viruses, pathogens

and bacteria. It is required to kick-start protectors to do its job and then
switch off. Inflammation becomes problematic when it doesn’t recede and
becomes chronic. Let’s first examine in detail what inflammation is. You
fall down and cut your knee. The area around the cut swells up and
becomes red because your vessels dilate and blood flow to the area
increases so that it can heal. The blood also starts clotting and slows down
so that you don’t bleed out. Your immune system starts producing a large
number of white blood cells (WBCs) to fight any infection or bacteria. At
the same time, your cells around the injured area start multiplying and
dividing to begin repair quickly. All of these processes together present as
inflammation. So even when you get sunburned, the redness that you see is
inflammation set in motion by your immune system to protect the healthy
cells around the area. That’s good inflammation. We need it to protect us.
But the problem occurs when the area doesn’t go back to normal. Chronic
inflammation is the number one cause of most diseases from heart attacks,
strokes and cardiac arrests to cancer. Difficulty in losing weight could also
be a reason for chronic inflammation. Stress also causes chronic
inflammation, because when there’s emotional stress, your body may not
multiply the number of WBCs, but it increases a certain protein marker in
your blood called CRP (C-reactive protein), which is what causes the
inflammation.
Your heart has vessels and arteries which, when clogged with plaque or
cholesterol, can lead to a cardiac arrest. But inflammation is the number one
cause of heart and other diseases. You have endothelial cells that line your
vessels in the heart. The overconsumption of sugar and salt, improper
lifestyle, overeating or over-medication can lead to these endothelial cells
getting inflamed and damaged. Inflammation sends out signals to your
immune system, which overreacts when the inflammation is chronic,
leading to heart disease.
Other effects of chronic inflammation are IBS, colitis, indigestion,
flatulence, bloating and Crohn’s disease. IBS is mainly a result of stress and
improper digestion of food. It is one of the most easily curable diseases
because it’s all related to lifestyle. Remember the tiny holes in the walls of
the intestines we covered in the previous section? Remember how these
expand due to large particles of undigested food, which then seep into your
blood? This is what leads to chronic inflammation. People then adopt diets
and exercise programmes, never understanding that inflammation could be
the reason they don’t lose weight. When you have inflammation because
you eat too much junk food, sugar or salt, you develop insulin resistance,
which means your cells stop responding to insulin and you have higher
blood-sugar levels and thus more storage of fat.
Think of a fat cell as something that contains a little bit of fat. When we
eat too much food these fat cells start expanding to hold the excess fat.
Every expanded cell triggers the immune system, which, in turn, triggers
inflammation. When you have chronic inflammation, your metabolic rate
decreases, you have hunger cravings, which mean you have upset the
biological, chemical and physiological working of your cells. Immunity is
great but immunity that’s constantly working in overdrive can actually
produce innumerable diseases and ailments.

Arthritis and inflammation

Most people today have arthritis of the knees, which again is caused
directly or indirectly by inflammation. Because of bad lifestyle habits, the
inflammation does not go away, making your arthritis consistently worse.
So you have to tackle the cause and stop targeting just the symptoms.
I believe that the human body is designed to reverse this condition by
itself. We are going to look at natural ways to heal the different types of
arthritis: rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis and certain kinds of spondylitis.
The root cause of all three is the same, no matter which kind of arthritis you
have—malnutrition at the cellular level and physical stress. We have
discussed the first factor in detail above, so let’s come to physical stress.
Lack of activity and a sedentary lifestyle are some of the biggest problems,
but over-exercising can also be a chief cause. When you put too much stress
on your joints—especially the ball-and-socket joints—muscles and cartilage
through jumping exercises, the wrong form of weightlifting, and over-
exercising without enough time for recovery, inflammation becomes
chronic because we don’t give our body the right nutrition to repair the
muscles, cartilage and joints.
Obesity, too, is a leading cause of arthritis today. Your knees and ball-
and-socket joints and spine are designed to carry a specific amount of
weight, which is your ideal weight. Excess weight over a long period of
time results in the cartilage, tendons and muscles in the surrounding area to
get weaker and weaker, when the body responds with inflammation.
Lack of calcium and a lack of vitamin D3 in the body further worsens, as
the bones get brittle and weaker, and the D3 deficiency compromises the
production of other hormones.
Constipation leads to the accumulation of morbid matter and toxins in the
human body and makes your body acidic, which has a direct connection to
arthritis. An acidic environment in the body doesn’t mean that you have to
experience heartburn and acidity all the time. Your stomach has a pH level
of about 3 to 3.5, which is required to digest food. But when you eat too
much acidic food, it reaches your colon and bowels. If you are left with a
burning sensation in your rectum every time you pass stool, it is a sign that
your body’s environment is way too acidic and you need to make lifestyle
changes. Excessive alcohol or smoking and the excessive consumption of
sugar, salt or processed food can also cause acidity. In such a case, your
body has alkaline buffers, which automatically make your blood alkaline.
Before nutrition from food can be transferred into your blood stream, it has
to be at a certain alkaline level, usually between 7 and 7.5. If the
environment in your body is constantly acidic and you’re eating more acidic
food, your body’s natural defence mechanism is to make that acidic blood
alkaline. To do so, it starts leeching calcium from your bones, which is
highly alkaline. Calcium isn’t leeched from the centre of your bones, which
is the densest part, but from the outer part, your tendons, joints and joint
ends because that’s where it is easily available and easy to leech. That’s
why all pain usually starts off in joints, like elbows, knees, toes and fingers,
and then spreads when it’s not managed to the centre of your bone. This is
the sign of the disease becoming chronic. When it’s done leeching calcium,
the body then starts leeching magnesium. Magnesium is an essential
mineral for the human body as it controls over 300–500 biochemical
reactions in it. Without the right amount of magnesium, your liver and
kidneys will not function optimally, and it can even lead to a cardiac arrest
in extreme cases.
Once the body starts leeching calcium, you are bound to automatically
have a vitamin D3 deficiency, because D3 requires calcium to be absorbed
into the human body. So, the best way to make sure that arthritis does not
worsen and your body starts recovering is to make your body alkaline. This
is easily done by making sure your diet is 80 per cent alkaline and 20 per
cent acidic in nature. Grains can be acidic in nature but raw food, water and
juices all are alkaline. When your diet is alkaline, you allow the body to
balance its pH level naturally, So there’s no unnecessary leeching of
calcium, magnesium or vitamin D3, or finishing off your alkaline buffers.
Therefore, a simple change of diet resets so many other deficiencies in the
body that could be the root cause of most of your health problems.
Certain fruits like pineapple are rich in an enzyme called bromelain.
Bromelain is an important enzyme when it comes to keeping your body
alkaline and reducing inflammation even in the most chronic cases of
rheumatoid osteoarthritis. Kalonji (blackseed), methi (fenugreek) and til
(white and black sesame) seeds are other inexpensive and easily available
foods rich in bromelain. To extract the best from these seeds, you should
soak two tablespoons overnight in water and drink the water in the morning.
Also eat the seeds, as they have highly anti-inflammatory properties. Methi
seeds in particular should be chewed for the most benefit.
The traditional Indian custom of drinking water out of a copper mug or a
copper vessel has a lot of power when it comes to handling inflammation
and arthritis. Copper is a trace mineral in the human body that strengthens
the muscles around your joints, your cartilage and the tendons around your
joints. So make sure that you drink a glass of water in the morning out of a
copper mug or vessel.
Mixing coconut oil with camphor and applying that oil to painful joints
will provide immediate relief. But do this every day for a week at least.
Camphor has anti-inflammatory properties and coconut oil has the ability to
be absorbed into your tendons and joints. It is best to massage this oil into
your skin before you sleep so you have the whole night for it to soak in.
A lot of people ask me if it is true that arthritis patients should not have
too much lemon because it is sour and can aggravate inflammation.
However, the opposite is true. Lemon is rich in citric acid, which has the
ability to dissolve uric acid and a lot of the hard deposits that could
accumulate between your joints. Thus, it can even reduce pain.
I also recommend taking a bath with sea salt, as it contains iodine. Iodine
is also essential for an under-active thyroid gland, which, too, can aggravate
your arthritis. Fill a bathtub or a bucket with sea salt and soak your limbs
and body in, because your body will absorb iodine from that salt to correct
an imbalance.
Keeping your body warm is also essential for good circulation. If you’re
putting bandages or crepe bandages around the areas and joints that pain,
make sure they’re not too tight because you don’t want to stop circulation
and blood flow to the sore areas. Reduction in blood flow will hamper
healing and result in more pain. Yoga is a suitable exercise as it is gentle on
the joints and certain asanas can help reduce inflammation and arthritis.
Pranayama trains your lungs to send the right amount of oxygen to your
inflamed cells and joints, and remove the excess carbon dioxide that is
trapped between the tissues of these inflamed joints, creating more pain and
reducing chances of healing.
I hope all these remedies, possible to easily try with ingredients most of
you might have at home, will help abate the symptoms of your arthritis and
make you believe that it need not be a chronic problem.

Reducing inflammation

So how do you reduce inflammation? The first step is to change the way
you eat. It’s not just what you put in your mouth, but also how you eat it,
assimilate it in your digestive system and digest it. You must reduce the
amount of junk and processed food, which causes nothing but inflammation
in the arteries of your heart, joints and everywhere else. You must also eat
simple home-cooked food and reduce the frequency of outside food.
Whether you eat out at a five-star hotel, an expensive restaurant or a
roadside joint, you have no control over the ingredients they use, the oil
they use, the amount of salt used and the method of preparation. Well-
cooked and healthy home food should be a goal for every one of us.
Move to a plant-based diet for two weeks to reduce inflammation in your
arteries. At the same time, remove dairy from your diet for two weeks and
you will see your inflammation levels come down consistently. The great
Indian diet naturally has enough food that is anti-inflammatory foods, such
as turmeric, cinnamon, garlic, onions and cooked tomatoes. So make sure
you include all of these in your diet in sufficient quantities. All fruits and
vegetables are also anti-inflammatory. You need to remember that cooked
food alone, without a balance of raw food in the diet, also creates
inflammation in the body. This is because when cooked food enters your
intestines, more WBCs are produced to handle the toxins from cooked food
because it is devoid of raw enzymes.
It’s often the case that arthritis patients have to be on painkillers. I am not
saying you should stop taking painkillers, but I do feel it’s essential to
change your lifestyle so that you can reduce the dosage and eventually
wean yourself off them, because one of the side effects of painkillers is
more inflammation—the very cause of your ailment.
So go ahead, make that lifestyle change. The human body is designed to
heal itself. Once you start doing these little things that address the root
cause of the problem and not just a symptom, you will feel much better.

Using lifestyle to reverse cholesterol, triglycerides and high blood pressure

Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death across the United
States, China and India.3 It claims lives every single year and causes
immense physical suffering, changes peoples’ lifestyles and restricts them.
High cholesterol, heart disease, good cholesterol, bad cholesterol,
triglycerides—all these are words that have become part of common
parlance because of how many people suffer from it.
For the longest time, people have devilled eggs, saturated fat and animal
fat for having high cholesterol and attributed consumption of these as the
number one cause of heart disease. What if I told you that cholesterol has
little or no connection to heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular disease?
For that we have to understand exactly what cholesterol is. About 75 per
cent of the cholesterol in your body is produced by your liver, and it is
required for so many different functions: cell repair, growing new cell
membrane and producing vitamin D and hormones. Cholesterol is required
for good health, for your memory and neurological health. Studies have
found links between low cholesterol levels and Alzheimer’s disease, cancer,
Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, neuromuscular pains, joint aches, dizziness,
bloating, the inability to lose weight and low vitamin D levels.4
HDL, or high-density lipoproteins, is good cholesterol. Its function is to
clean the bad cholesterol from your arteries and remove plaque. LDL,
which stands for low-density lipoproteins, is bad cholesterol. But you
shouldn’t always be worried by high levels of LDL because it can be further
broken down, a fact doctors tend to ignore. Large LDL particles do not
cause heart problems, while small particles of LDL have the potential to do
so. Similarly, triglycerides are dangerous if present in extremely high levels
in your body. Picture triglycerides as fats flowing all through your arteries
and causing plaque build-up, which can eventually cause clots in your brain
or lower arteries, leading to strokes or paralysis of the body. Many doctors
look at overall cholesterol levels (a combination of HDL, LDL and
triglycerides) and accordingly decide if you need a cholesterol-lowering
drug or statin. What must be done instead is to look at the lipid profile—i.e.,
the ratio of HDL to LDL and triglycerides. It is possible to have overall
high levels of cholesterol, but if your HDL is high, you do not require
medication even if your LDL is on the higher side. If your triglycerides are
extremely high, you are in a potential high-risk category and need to make
immediate lifestyle changes to bring this down. Triglyceride levels rise
from eating too much of the wrong carbohydrates, fats and sugar, being
physically inactive, too much smoking, overconsumption of alcohol, being
overweight or obese and being constantly stressed.
It is a myth that an imbalance in cholesterol levels leads to heart attacks.
Heart attacks occur from inflammation in your arteries and high blood
pressure if it is poorly managed. When you have poor circulation due to
inactivity or have a diet high in sugar and salt, and lacking in plants, fruits,
nuts and seeds, the endothelial cells in your arteries get damaged.
Inflammation sets in, as it is the body’s natural response to cellular damage,
which constricts the arteries and reduces blood flow. Your blood also
thickens and because of this, you have high blood pressure. Over time, this
inflammation keeps blood pressure high, which can form clots in your
brain, arteries or any part of your body, and lead to a stroke, paralysis or
cardiac arrest. Cholesterol does not fit into this little picture I just drew.
However, high triglyceride and low good-cholesterol levels do contribute
to inflammation and damage in your arteries. If you take drugs to lower
your cholesterol without changing your lifestyle, you risk harming yourself.
It may make your next blood report look good because it shows a reduction
in overall cholesterol levels, but the medicines don’t contribute to an
increase in your HDL levels. You have to understand that cholesterol is a
precursor to steroid hormones. You cannot make oestrogen, testosterone or
cortisol if you have low cholesterol levels. The UVB rays of the sun interact
with cholesterol in your body to make vitamin D, so if you have low
cholesterol and vitamin D deficiency at the same time, your liver gets a
signal to produce more cholesterol because your body wants to naturally
increase vitamin D levels. So, sometimes fixing your vitamin D deficiency
is all that is required to prevent the excess production of cholesterol,
because your body will continue producing whatever it needs for bodily
functions. Doctors tend to ignore this factor while tackling cholesterol
problems.
I have noticed that in India, doctors do not check for C-reactive protein
(CRP) levels. Ever since I have moved to India, I have made every patient
and client check their CRP level, as high CRP levels are a measure of
inflammation. I am appalled that patients don’t have to get this test done
before or after bypass surgery.
Did you know that your cholesterol level is directly linked to your insulin
level? If your body is producing more insulin because you have insulin
insensitivity, your liver will also produce more cholesterol. So, a diabetic
will automatically have higher cholesterol because of high insulin levels.
These patients take one drug for diabetes and another to lower cholesterol
and another to manage the side effect of both those pills. A few months
later, you’re prescribed blood pressure medication, and so the cycle sustains
itself.
So work on bringing down your sugar levels and your cholesterol levels
will automatically correct themselves. It all comes down to what you eat. If
you eat a lot of processed sugar, processed food and bad carbohydrates,
your body needs more cholesterol to produce more hormones such as
oestrogen, cortisol and testosterone to keep you healthy, as these get
depleted because of unhealthy food. If your blood-sugar levels are high, you
go to a doctor who puts you on a pill for diabetes and one for cholesterol.
Now let’s discuss the second function of cholesterol, which is to repair
your cells. If you’re constantly damaging the cells in your arteries because
of your lifestyle, getting injured because of overtraining, and/or have
inflammation in your body, your cholesterol level will be high. So if I am
treating a cancer patient who is on cholesterol medication, the first thing I
do is work with their doctors to get them off their medication in a safe way,
because I want their body to produce more cholesterol and repair cells, as
all cancers originate from cells. Cholesterol is in all the food that you’ve
been told over the last few years is bad for you: egg yolks and saturated fats
such as ghee, coconut oil and olive oil. However, all of these fats contain
the right amount of cholesterol and enzymes, and you need those fats. Your
liver produces a certain amount of cholesterol every day. If you’re getting it
from another source, such as seafood or deep-fried food, your liver will
automatically produce less of it. A bad lifestyle combined with too much
high-cholesterol food, poor circulation and too much inflammation in your
body is what leads to excess cholesterol in the body. If your doctor puts you
on a statin, you should ask him/her about the side effects of this deadly
drug.5 The kind of side effects I see in people who are on statins range from
dizziness, bloating and flatulence to neuromuscular damage, muscle fatigue,
softening of bones, Parkinson’s disease and memory loss. Statins work by
inhibiting an enzyme that your liver uses to produce cholesterol. We have
established why cholesterol is essential for the body, so inhibiting
production interferes with the dynamics of the human body. Statins also
deplete your body of something called coenzyme Q10, commonly known as
CoQ10, which is an extremely important antioxidant that the mitochondria
of your cells use to produce cellular energy. This means you’re entering the
vicious cycle of lowering your immunity, increasing inflammation and
inviting disease into the body. Just as it is essential to take a probiotic and
B12 supplement with an antibiotic, if you are on a statin, high-blood-
pressure medication or a cholesterol-lowering drug, you should be
prescribed a CoQ10 supplement. Preferably, it should be a CoQ10 plant-
based supplement. Otherwise, you should have ubiquinol. Ubiquinol is the
reduced (oxidized) form of CoQ10. If you’re over 50, you have to take both
these enzymes to replenish the antioxidant your statin or cholesterol
medication depletes. That’s why today there is no cure for cardiovascular
disease. High blood pressure, unless corrected, can lead to a cardiac arrest,
clot, stroke or surgery.
This does not mean no one needs surgery, cholesterol drugs, etc. but you
also need doctors to tell you when these are necessary, because
overprescription is creating more sickness and financial stress on everyone.
Many of us pop pills because we want our blood reports to look good. We
don’t make lifestyle changes and suffer from the side effects of these
medicines. Cholesterol is one of the easiest things to manage with the right
lifestyle changes.

As discussed above, you must optimize your vitamin D intake to

correct cholesterol.
Reduce your intake of bad carbohydrates, such as refined sugar and
white flour.
Don’t overdo it with fruits, as it can cause a build-up of fructose,
which your body cannot break down. This adversely impacts your
triglyceride levels.
Make sure to include heart-friendly food, such as omega-3 from
flaxseeds, good-quality fatty fish, avocados, whole eggs, nuts (like
walnuts), seeds, coconut oil and ghee to improve your HDL levels.
All this then needs to be supplemented with exercise to increase blood
circulation. It’s not completely effective if you work out for one hour
but are inactive for the next nine hours.
Reduce your stress by practising pranayama, yoga, meditation and
deep breathing.
 When you sleep, your cholesterol levels get balanced, so make sure
you get enough of it.
Moderate your intake of alcohol. I meet many people who say they
don’t drink for six days a week but binge- drink on the seventh day.
You’re better off drinking every single day in moderation rather than
consuming large amounts in one sitting. Binge-drinking causes
inflammation in your liver.
Excessive smoking puts pressure on your arteries, constricting them.
Don’t use olive oil for Indian cooking as you’re adding toxins and free
radicals that create inflammation in your body. Use the local oil you
grew up on, such as coconut oil, mustard oil, peanut oil, pure oils and
nut oils. Unsaturated, polyester, canola and saturated vegetable oils are
all rubbish as they create inflammation because they’re so refined.
Include more probiotics and fermented food in your diet to keep your
gut clean.
Move to a plant-based diet. Eat more fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds.
Stop eating out for a while, and you will see the effects very soon.
I want to state clearly here that please do not stop taking your
medication without prior approval from your doctor.

Lifestyle adjustments to heal the thyroid gland

Thyroid problems plague thousands of people across the globe. The

symptoms of an underactive or poorly performing thyroid range from
weight gain and inability to lose weight, to brittle fingernails, soft bones,
hair fall, feeling cold in your extremities, frequent infections, dizziness,
constipation, mental and physical fatigue, headaches and migraine. You
may have a pill or an antibiotic for all these symptoms I just mentioned, or
if you just fix your thyroid gland, these symptoms may slowly and
eventually disappear. The thyroid gland is a little butterfly-shaped gland
situated below the neck, which controls some of the most important
functions in the human body, from metabolic activity to hormonal balance.
An underactive thyroid might be the number one reason globally for weight
gain and the ability to lose weight across men and women. Let’s examine
why people get hypothyroidism in the first place.
Many patients stay on medication for years. I am not saying that you
should never take medication and all doctors are wrong, I just believe
medication for an underactive thyroid is not necessary. Rather, it is
necessary to find the underlying cause, because medications do nothing to
repair and nourish your thyroid gland. No doubt, the thyroid medication
makes you feel a little better because you have more energy, but it does not
fix the gland. Most people are told by doctors that being on thyroid
medication is for life, but that need not be the case. Fixing your thyroid
does not have to be a struggle because the human body is designed to heal
itself. There are many cases that will require thyroxine, but doctors should
take the necessary measures to check if the underlying problem is thyroid
issues or autoimmune-induced thyroid disease, and how many lifestyle
changes can be made to help the gland heal and naturally produce this
hormone.
Let’s examine the impact stress has on your thyroid gland. When you get
stressed, your adrenal gland produces cortisol, which is required for
reflexes and bodily functions, but as discussed above, it becomes a problem
when the body generates too much of it. To recap, chronic stress leads to
higher production of cortisol, which lowers production of thyroxine, DHEA
(a hormone that boosts immunity) and testosterone, which are important for
hormonal balance and other functions in the body. It might sound like an
obvious thing for doctors and nutritionists to tell you to manage your stress,
but it is what will have the most impact.
Extreme diets, such as a vegan diet, paleo diets, raw fruits, raw
vegetables and juicing diets have also become very common. These are
great for different people in different situations, but when these diets are
followed to an extreme, they can cause problems and even serious diseases,
such as hypothyroidism. For example, going vegan and eating too many
raw vegetables, such as cabbage, cauliflower, kale and broccoli, all of
which are rich in goitrogens, has a negative effect on your thyroid glands if
they are already not functioning at the optimal level. These vegetables are
great, particularly for cancer patients, but in moderation and when eaten in
the right way. Cruciferous vegetables are better steamed or cooked. So
whatever diet you embrace, be aware that it could cause many issues,
ranging from vitamin deficiencies to mineral deficiencies and the onset of
hypothyroidism, diabetes and many other complications. Moderation is the
key, no matter what you adopt.

The link between oil and the thyroid gland

Each one of us ingests oil through our food every single day. By consuming
the wrong dietary oil, you may be slowly poisoning and weakening your
cells and organs. The right oil energizes and nourishes your cells and
organs, and translates to better hormone production and immunity. In my
opinion, consumption of the wrong dietary oils is one of the main reasons
why people have thyroid issues today. Polyunsaturated oils like soybean oil,
corn oil, sunflower oil and vegetable oils have flooded the market, pushing
out unrefined, cold-pressed, natural, saturated fats which are best for
cooking. For example, soybean oil is found in almost every processed food.
It is difficult to visit a restaurant that doesn’t use soybean oil or some sort of
vegetable oil that contains soybean. Soybean is a polyunsaturated oil. This
and its products are used to feed livestock to fatten the animals. It also
promotes unhealthy weight gain in human beings.
Unsaturated oils block production of thyroxine by the thyroid gland and
lessen communication between hormones and cells. This communication is
essential for weight loss, hormonal balance and any bodily function, as
every function is chemical in nature. Importantly, all this communication is
controlled by thyroxine. Therefore, your cells could be containing and
storing more fat, which is not natural. Polyunsaturated fats also oxidize
quickly and turn rancid in your cells. This compromises liver function and
production of enzymes required to convert fat into energy, adding to the
weight gain caused by an underactive thyroid. To convert fat into energy
you need thyroid 4 (T4) and thyroid 3 (T3). Conversion of T4 to T3 needs
to be effective to generate enzymes that allow conversion of fat into energy.
Consuming the wrong food and fats impairs that conversion and puts
oxidative stress on your liver.
Secondly, a thyroid gland that is not functioning optimally causes excess
production of oestrogen. With high oestrogen levels, the body produces less
of a protective hormone like progesterone. The third important function of
thyroxine is to eliminate cholesterol from the human body. A lot of people
do the thyroid stimulating hormone test to determine if all of these
functions are taking place smoothly. However, this is not enough, as people
can have TSH levels within a recommended range but still have an
underactive thyroid gland. To be sure, you need to do the TSH test, and
check T3 and T4 levels. I also recommend the TPO (thyroid peroxidase)
and TG (thyroglobulin) antibody tests to see if the thyroid issue is an
autoimmune condition. Doing all these tests will give the patient and doctor
a clearer picture.
Now let’s discuss how you can remedy the situation. The best thing for
your thyroid gland is virgin coconut oil. This miracle oil has been used for
years to treat not only thyroid diseases but also those ranging from cancer to
obesity. Unlike a polyunsaturated fat, which is a long- chain fatty acid, pure
virgin coconut oil is a medium-chain triglyceride (MCT). MCT metabolizes
quickly, with the least possible oxidative stress on the liver tissues and
organs, which allows conversion of fat into energy, and T4 into T3. The oil
stimulates the thyroid gland, energizing, nourishing and healing it, unlike
your thyroid medication which just gives you a little more thyroxine. Pure
virgin coconut oil also increases metabolic activity and helps you burn belly
fat—2 to 3 tablespoons of cold-pressed pure virgin coconut oil every day is
enough to begin the healing process. While it can be had raw, I definitely
recommend cooking with it. If you use a tablespoon of any other oil to cook
a particular dish, use half a tablespoon when you switch to coconut oil,
because the quality and viscosity of the latter is such that you can cook
more food with less oil. If you’re worried about the smell, rest assured
because cold-pressed coconut oil doesn’t smell like coconut. It has a very
light nutty and sweet flavour when had raw or mixed with salads.
 You may also need to take care of your intake of certain minerals, such as
selenium, to make sure your thyroid gland heals well. Selenium gets
depleted when your thyroid gland is not functioning optimally. In severe
cases of thyroid issues, you may need to take supplements. If you don’t
want to take plant-based selenium supplements, you can increase
consumption of food such as Brazil nuts, almonds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds
and sunflower seeds. At the same time, make sure your diet contains
adequate iodine and vitamins A and D.
Apart from consuming the right oil and supplementing with selenium,
balanced nutrition is a must for your thyroid gland to heal and function
properly. Those who suffer from the condition should not have too many
raw vegetables, whether consumed whole or in the form of juice.
Cruciferous vegetables especially should be steamed. This is because the
high sulphur content can harm the thyroid gland. To make sure that the
body receives the most of this balanced diet, adequate exercise is necessary.
Good blood circulation carries oxygen and the nutrients from the food to
your cells. More the nutrients, more the energy your cells receive. The
stronger your cells, the more balanced your hormones and the stronger your
immunity will be. You will also want to make sure you sleep well and
enough, because the thyroid gland, liver and kidneys rejuvenate while you
are asleep. They get stronger as you rest, and your cortisol levels also drop
to the lowest at this point. You can even add a bit of pleasure to all these
changes by making sure you have sex. Safe, hygienic sex is great for
thyroid function, because DHEA and testosterone, which are sex hormones,
boost immunity and regenerate the enzymes that impact production of
thyroxine.
As of now, I have hundreds of clients across the globe who have been on
thyroid medication for years, and after making lifestyle changes have been
able to safely get off or reduce the dosages to a minimum. If you decide to
follow these recommendations, keep your doctor in the loop, because if you
have been on thyroid medication for a long time, you can’t get off
medication suddenly. You need to transition. Lower your dosage. For
example, if you are on 100 mg, you will have to cut it down to 50 mg and
then 25 mg and then 5 mg while you incorporate everything mentioned here
into your lifestyle. Constantly consult your doctor, because sometimes you
may get chills or fever when you get off the medication.
These few lifestyle changes will have a significant impact. However, if
you think it is unlikely that you will consistently adhere to what I have
outlined, it’s safer to stay on your medication. When people have diseases
caused by low immunity as well as thyroid-related ailments, it becomes
very difficult to treat those diseases because thyroid function also stimulates
immunity. So I encourage everyone to invest in making sure your thyroid
gland is healthy.

Understanding and healing diabetes

Most people with diabetes believe they cannot lose weight, but as they start
to lose even a little body fat through lifestyle changes, they find that they
can improve their condition.
Diabetes plagues millions of people around the world: teenagers, middle-
aged people, the elderly and even children. All of us have been given to
believe that once you are prescribed medication for the condition, you have
to continue taking it every single day. I will explain the impact of diabetes
on the body, how you can reverse it, prevent it or improve your condition. I
believe that diabetes can be reversed when it is not caused by genetic
disorders. However, even then, the condition can still definitely be managed
in a healthier way with minimum collateral damage to the body because of
the medicines you may be on.
What comes along with disease is a lot of fear. This fear drives patients to
explore option after option, consulting different doctors, nutritionists and
healers and even ‘Dr Google’. They try out many remedies, never really
improving.
The approach that I have to reverse diabetes is if you want to cure or
reverse a disease, you must first understand how the human body works. So
we will examine exactly how you get diabetes, what happens in your body
and how to address the root cause by making the necessary lifestyle
changes and eating the food your body needs. Most cases of diabetes are
caused by an unhealthy lifestyle. This means it takes a change in lifestyle to
bring on the disease. What this also means is that when we reverse or
change the lifestyle to something better, we can reverse the disease. To
reverse diabetes, you should be willing to take personal responsibility for
your own health and body. The reason more and more people are falling ill
is that they do not want to take personal charge of their health and bodies
but rather entrust doctors, nutritionists, physiotherapists, psychologists and
healers with the responsibility of fixing them. It doesn’t work that way.
Now that you know how we are going to tackle the problem, let’s
understand the disease.
Every time you eat food, it gets digested. The breakdown of
carbohydrates, proteins and fats causes your blood sugar to rise. When this
happens, your pancreas needs to produce insulin. We have discussed this
hormone in detail earlier. Insulin carries glucose from your blood and
knocks against the cell doors of your muscle and fat. Your cell doors hear
the knock and open. Your fat and muscles store glucose for energy
breakdown in the future. Sometimes, these cells get resistant to insulin. This
means the insulin is knocking against the cell door, but the cells don’t hear
the knock, so then the glucose stays in your blood. As a result, your
pancreas produce more and more insulin until the knock is loud enough for
the cells to open and take in that glucose. If this keeps happening over and
over, your pancreas start losing the ability to produce more insulin. This
leads to type 2 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is classified as the condition when
your pancreas cannot produce insulin any more and you need to inject it
into your body. Therefore, diabetes is not just about the amount of sugar
and the low GI (glycaemic index) food you eat. There’s much more to it.
For instance, why don’t your cells open up when insulin knocks against it?
Why aren’t your pancreases strong enough to produce enough insulin to
take that glucose and put it in your cells? These are the questions that we
need to tackle.
Diabetes can be brought on by metabolic syndrome, which can be a
combination of excess weight, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol,
elevated triglycerides and/or bad cholesterol (high LDL or low HDL).
When you have any of these conditions, your diabetes will not get better
unless you address them, because metabolic syndrome supports and
facilitates diabetes.
Diabetes is a nutritional wasting disease. What this means is the elevated
levels of glucose in the blood act as a diuretic. A diuretic is anything that
flushes out matter through urine. So there is substantial loss of nutrients in
your urine when you have high glucose levels in your blood. Therefore,
some of the symptoms of diabetes are the frequent urge to urinate, increased
thirst and hunger, tiredness, numbness in the feet and legs, and changes in
vision. Most experts make no attempt to help you replenish these nutrients,
which can help you reverse diabetes. Vitamin B, right from B1 to B12, gets
depleted. These vitamins increase your cell sensitivity towards insulin,
which means your cells need them to recognize that knock and open up to
take that excess glucose. Similarly, vitamins C and D get flushed out
because of high blood sugar. Low vitamin D3 levels and vitamin C are
indicators of low immunity. A cell that has strong immunity has a lot of
energy and a cell that has low immunity doesn’t have the energy to listen to
the knock of insulin. Magnesium is another mineral that gets depleted
through excess urination. This is why most diabetics experience calf pain,
muscular pain and pain in their joints.
You may have to take supplements to replenish trace minerals, because
even the best food in the world today cannot provide them unless it is really
truly organic. By the time a bunch of spinach reaches our kitchen, it has lost
loads of trace minerals and nutrients. So sometimes taking the right plant
formulation the right way becomes necessary. Make sure to have vitamin B-
complex supplements as well and vitamin D tablets if you are not getting
enough sunlight.

Food that can reverse diabetes

Here’s what you need to understand about sugar and diabetes. Sugar
depletes critical electrolytes in your body, such as potassium, magnesium,
calcium and sodium, leading to cellular dehydration and chronic muscle
spasms. Cellular dehydration decreases the energy of your cell and prevents
it from hearing the knock of insulin. Sugar also depletes trace minerals like
chromium, copper and zinc. Their function is to sensitize cells to insulin. So
the very condition depletes the body of the nutrients that increases the
sensitivity of cells to insulin.
In this section, we will discuss natural food that can help reverse
diabetes.
Most of us have diets that don’t contain the daily requirement fibre. Fibre
has a mechanical function, as it passes through your body and doesn’t
directly impact your insulin. But when your carbohydrates, proteins and fats
break down and you have sufficient fibre, it can delay the way blood
glucose enters your blood stream. So, for example, when I eat a fruit, which
is a simple carb, it will increase my blood-sugar levels. But, if I follow it
with a handful of nuts, which are rich in protein and fibre, breakdown of the
glucose in my blood is going to be far slower, preventing a spike in blood
sugar. A common fear in today’s world is that fruit raises sugar levels. But
fruit has natural sugars and fibre that are designed to manage blood-sugar
levels. Fructose molecules in fruits and pure honey are small and have little
or no dangerous impact on blood sugar. These can be handled and
metabolized well by the body. Often, patients eat a mango, see an increase
in the sugar level and get scared. However, what they should be scared of is
a continuous rise. The sugar level will rise even for a healthy person,
because it’s an indication of the normal chemical breakdown of food in the
body. For a diabetic person it may rise higher, but it is fine if it steadies. So
yes, you can eat fruit, but in the right way, that is, in its whole form and not
as juice. Also always make sure to have it on an empty stomach or 30–45
minutes before meals and preferably before sunset. Similarly, should
diabetic patients give up white rice completely? Yes, if the consumption is
too high. But if the white rice is mixed with a lot of vegetables and lentils,
the fibre and protein in the lentils will not allow the blood-sugar levels to
rise as quickly as eating a bowl of plain white rice. So, the more fibre you
incorporate in your food, the better your sugar levels will be.
 Apart from fibre, spices and herbs play an important part in reversing
diabetes. The following are a few of my favourites:

1. Sri Lankan roll cinnamon: I specify Sri Lankan because that’s the safe
cinnamon, unlike cassia, the Indian variety, too much of which is toxic
for the liver. Try to have it after meals. Add it to yoghurt if you eat
dairy or a cup of green tea.
2. Fenugreek: Soak the seeds overnight. Eat them the next morning and
drink the water. Add methi to your food wherever possible. It is best to
have it after a meal.
3. Turmeric: The extract of turmeric, curcumin, has a positive impact on
controlling blood-sugar levels. It can be boiled with ginger and pepper
or taken in supplement form for best results.
4. Garlic: This has an impact on regulating your sugar levels. Add it to
foods or mash it and have it raw with raw honey.
5. Curry leaves (kadi patta): Turn it into a chutney, add it to your juice or
garnish on top of vegetables.
6. Aloe vera: Grow your own aloe vera at home. It should be consumed
on an empty stomach in the morning.
7. Cloves: Add cloves to a tea infusion or to your food. You can even
suck on a clove soaked for 1–2 hours in water.
8. Oregano: Garnish your tea, salads or main dishes with dry oregano
powder or leaves.

All of these have the ability to not just bring down your sugar levels
immediately, but also improve the health of your pancreas, the production
of insulin and the sensitivity of your cells through continuous use.
Every second, your cells are talking to each other. There’s chemistry and
communication between a hormone and a cell for a particular function. To
keep that communication strong, you need to feed the cells the right amount
of energy, which comes from the water you drink and the food you eat. So
if you eat too much processed food, which has too much salt, it will rob
your cells of water. The low fibre in processed food also increases blood-
sugar levels rapidly. Thus, your food choices can impact the health of your
pancreas and decrease the sensitivity and communication between insulin
and your cells.
All of the above recommendations are of food that you should add to
your diet. We now come to the part of removing food from your diet. If you
truly want to reverse diabetes, get on a plant-based diet. I am a non-
vegetarian. I love meat and fish and dairy, but I also realize the damage it
does to people with diabetes, metabolic syndrome and thyroid is far worse
than someone who doesn’t have it. Animals are pumped with hormones and
antibiotics, which enter your body through the meat and the milk that you
drink. Cow milk has 3–4 times more protein and 51 per cent more saturated
fat than breast milk. Your body doesn’t need that much protein. As a result,
your body has to produce more acid to break down that protein, which leads
to leeching of calcium from the bones and eventually osteoporosis. More
acidity in the body results in more problems with your pancreas and hence
insulin sensitivity. These toxic hormones and antibiotics further disrupt the
hormonal imbalance in your body. No matter how much metformin or
insulin you take, your condition will worsen. Also, every medicine has a
side effect. For example, metformin helps people lose weight by forcing
glucose into your cells but the side effects are gastrointestinal issues and
weakening of the kidneys. It may improve your medical reports, but it is
merely controlling the symptom. So continue with your medication if you
have to, but make it a goal that you are going to get off that medication
because you are going to change your lifestyle.
If you can’t adhere to a plant-based diet, at least reduce your intake of
meat. At the same time, you must also give up milk. Try it for two weeks
and I can promise you, you will feel better. In case you really can’t give it
up, switch to buttermilk. As this is a little bit of yoghurt beaten up with
water, you are diluting it. Also, in the fermentation process, lactose changes
to lactase which is more digestible than lactose.
I myself tried the plant-based diet I have recommended to understand
what exactly happens in the body as a result of it. I felt energetic, though I
did lose a little muscle mass, which I soon regained with additional
vegetable protein from beans, nuts and seeds.
Even if you learn to live with diabetes, you suffer from internal damage
to your organs, and may have to take more pills to relieve those symptoms.
A plant-based diet of nuts, seeds and vegetables will heal you naturally. It is
better to cook the vegetables rather than eating them raw. You may juice the
vegetables, but do so in moderation. Include lots of lentils and legumes, and
fibrous grains such as organic brown rice and quinoa. If you have white
rice, have a lot of vegetables with it. Millets are great for controlling your
sugar levels. If you find it tough to adhere to this diet full-time, have it for
two weeks to a month. I can guarantee you will have better sugar levels.

Exercise and diabetes

I know so many diabetics who do not even walk for 20 minutes a day. This
is terrible for the body because that extra glucose that gets stored in your
blood needs to be broken down into energy. And that can’t happen if you sit
for eight hours a day. That can happen only if you exercise and move.
Incorporate walking for 30–45 minutes on six out of seven days and your
blood-sugar levels will show an improvement.

Stress

When your body is stressed, it produces cortisol. As it is a stress hormone,

your body will ready you for a fight or flight response, which needs energy.
Therefore, your body will try to keep as much glucose in the blood as
possible so that it can break it down rapidly, because it takes more time to
break down glucose stored in muscle or fat. So an increase in cortisol sends
a signal to insulin to decrease so that your blood sugar stays high. Chronic
stress means you chronically have lower levels of insulin and higher levels
of blood sugar. So meditate, do pranayama or take on a hobby that calms
you. No excuses. I know all of us have stress. But if you are looking to
reverse the disease, you have to make that extra effort, take that personal
responsibility and reduce it every way you can.

Somatostatin

When to eat the right food is just as important as what to eat. You must
remember the following points we will cover about the hormone
somatostatin every time you feel like eating something that has refined
sugar after a workout. Somatostatin is a hormone that tells your pancreas to
produce less insulin. Somatostatin production increases due to stress or if
you eat something that has refined sugar after going for a run, playing a
sport or exercising. Refined sugar immediately signals your body to
increase somatostatin in your stomach, brain, thyroid and pancreas, thus
inhibiting insulin production. So if you want to eat sweet and junk food,
never do so immediately after a workout. You may feel as if you have
earned that cupcake you really want. Yes, you have, but do not consume
refined sugar for at least two hours after physical activity.

Sleep

If you are sleeping 5–6 hours, you are likely to have a hormonal imbalance
because hormones take about 6.5–8 hours to balance. Hormonal imbalance
affects insulin, thyroxine, etc. That’s why diabetes patients usually also
have heart problems, and thyroid and kidney issues. This can spiral into a
vicious trap of medicines, wherein the dosage keeps on increasing.

Eating the wrong stuff occasionally

I know diabetic people all around the world who started losing weight when
they followed these guidelines. Just to be clear, I did not track the number
on the scale, but rather reduction in body fat. You lose inches when you lose
fat. A lower number on the scale could be a result of losing water weight,
lean mass or bone density, or it could also signal the onset of a disease.
 It all comes down to eating the right food. However, there will be times
you will want to have the wrong stuff as well. For example, if you are
diabetic and want to eat an ice cream once in a while, you can do so in a
way that will limit the harmful effect. Make sure to have a sprinkle of nuts
with your ice cream or drink a glass of lemon water with Sri Lankan roll
cinnamon or something with fibre afterwards. This way, the bad food that
creates irregular sugar levels will be balanced out by the good food. It all
comes down to balance. And that is what is going to help you reverse
diabetes.
 3
ADEQUATE EXERCISE

Has it ever happened that despite working out regularly, hitting the gym,
doing Pilates, MMA, yoga, HIIT, running or lifting weights, you don’t lose
weight? You run marathon after marathon or play soccer thrice a week but
still have belly fat and fat in unwanted areas? This is because exercise never
really helps much when it comes to weight loss. Don’t get me wrong.
Exercise contributes greatly to staying healthy and living longer, but when
it comes to weight loss, exercise contributes in a very small way. Weight
loss is not as simple as calculating the calories consumed and calories
utilized. The media and magazines fill our minds with images, graphics and
videos of extremely fit people with great bodies involved in some sport or
exercise and the mind immediately links weight loss and a great body with
exercise. Using exercise to lose weight or as a remedy to eating the wrong
food is the reason why weight loss continues to be the most wanted and yet,
most elusive goal for most people. It’s more important to consume food that
has a thermic effect in the body, exercise portion control, eat mindfully and
help the body rid itself of toxins through detoxification. Exercise is great for
keeping the body supple, flexible and energized. Done the right way and at
the right intensity, it does not cause wear and tear to the bones and muscles.
You’ll realize that the number of exercise programmes now available to
you has increased vastly. Movement and variety is good for you, but issues
creep up when you choose exercises or programmes mindlessly. With so
many gyms, trainers and classes available, the number of fit people should
be increasing, while the opposite is true in most areas.
 If you have been working out regularly, watching your diet and doing
everything to lead a healthy lifestyle and still struggling with your weight,
here are some of the reasons that could be the obstacle.

1. Overtraining: This is by far the worst problem, not just because it’s
definitely the reason you are not losing that tummy, but also as it has
adverse side effects, such as lowering immunity, causing
bone/spine/knee de-generation, depleting vitamins and minerals, and
rapid ageing (looking older, greying or loss of hair, loss of skin lustre,
feeling older, more tired and less enthusiastic). Training the same
muscle group daily leads to cortisol production, and this hormone tells
the body to store fat in the abdominal area, for some people, on the
butt, hips and thighs. Muscles need rest to recover, grow and repair.
The more intensive the workout, the more recovery and rest you need.
If you sleep less, you should work out less, or your workout is
practically useless. You may feel good that you did it despite being
tired or sleeping less, but training without 7–8 hours of deep sleep
causes more stress to the body, which translates to more cortisol
production, hormonal imbalance, fat and weight gain, or the inability
to lose weight. It’s a fad that one needs to work out every single day.
You are better off doing a really intensive workout and taking
complete rest the next day (maybe with some light yoga, stretching or
walking). There is absolutely no evidence that shows that 6 continuous
days of intensive workout yields holistic health results. Less is more.
This statement is invalid if you are an athlete or professional
bodybuilder, as these are the three things to focus on in that case—to
eat, sleep and train. Athletes recover through enough rest, supplements
and nutrition, so they can even train twice a day. The problem is,
people see exercise as a task that must be ticked off their to-do list.
You need to see exercise as a goal, select one that is in line with your
body type and nutrition, and then work that smartly into our week. If
your knees and back hurt and stay sore for over 24 to 48 hours post a
workout, you are overtraining. If you are working out harder, because
 you don’t seem to be losing weight, you may be overtraining or your
nutrition isn’t supporting your workouts. For women especially, please
note that you have a different hormonal balance from men, and
overtraining puts this out of whack, leading to mood swings, more fat
and higher readings on the weighing scale. You may seem bloated,
gassy and heavier if you overtrain.
2. Consuming fewer calories than what you burn: This is the equation for
weight loss, but not if you are engaged in intensive training. In that
case, your body will cause muscles to deplete and deposit more fat.
You need to eat more of the right food to burn fat and provide your
body and bones energy and strength to get through a workout. If you
don’t, it can lead to vitamin deficiencies (especially D3), bone
degeneration and injuries. If you feel you have reached such a plateau,
my advice is to take a break for a week and only do 40–45 minutes of
brisk walking for 6 days, with the 7th day being a rest day. You are
guaranteed results and changes.

Now let’s break it all down.

Are you doing an exercise that you love or enjoy? If you are forcing your
body to do something, it just won’t work. Just like if you take a pill without
the belief that it will work.
You should know what your fitness goal is. You need to know how you
want to look and feel. You need to be able to visualize the body you want.
Then you can figure out the kind of nutrition, type of exercise, amount of
sleep and lifestyle changes you require.
Many people are disciplined about their diet, exercise and sleep on
weekdays, but the food and alcohol they consume over the weekend wipes
out all the effort put in during those 5 days. Does this mean you should give
up your weekend plans? Absolutely not. Instead, you can learn to live in
balance and respect the words ‘moderation’ and ‘compensation’. Binge-
drinking and binge-eating rob you of your health and put more distance
between your goal and you. You need to take a look at yourself and
understand the trigger behind such behaviour. Most people that I counsel
say that after a long week of hard work, this is the way they unwind. I can
understand the sentiment, but if you are looking at lifestyle changes that
help you unwind a little every day, you may be able to work harder and
enjoy what we do, as well as bring a little peace into each day. That will
reduce the amount you binge-drink or eat over the weekend. It is important
to indulge in a little ‘me’ time, to sit in silence for at least a few minutes,
reflect on the day gone by, and then prepare to sleep. This can be done
anywhere, in your home, in a hotel room, on a flight, or even in a tent under
the stars.
I advise my clients to enjoy a drink every day rather than binge-drink on
a Saturday. The liver can only take so much at a time, no matter how strong
you may think you are. Likewise with food. I have never understood the
concept of binge-eating. Eat what you like—junk, processed food, desserts,
deep-fried things, but do not overeat. Overconsumption is the foremost
cause of obesity and ill health. Overeating cannot impact your happiness.
You won’t enjoy a party more by overeating. Overdrinking may help you do
so as it lowers your inhibitions, but it is terrible for your health and should
prompt you to introspect whether there is any void that leads you to do so.
Most of those voids revolve around emotions, fear and insecurity.
Binge-eating and binge-drinking increase the level of toxicity in your
body so much that it takes days for the cells to get back into balance, and no
amount of heavy exercise or lemon water will bring about immediate
effects. You may think you are detoxing, but it doesn’t work that way.
Binge-drinking wreaks havoc on your triglyceride levels, cholesterol,
blood-sugar levels, blood pressure, circulation, liver and kidney health,
mental and sexual health, immunity and a lot more. Moderation is key.
Most of my clients who lose weight rapidly are the ones who finally
come to terms with the fact that their weekend and social calendar can do
the most damage to their health and weight goals, as well as consuming
restaurant food too often.
Most of these clients lose weight by just brisk walking for 45 minutes six
days out of seven. They may add some yoga, flexibility training, Pilates or
even a bit of strength training using their own body weight. Every workout
programme should contain exercises that revolve around squats, lunges,
planks, push-ups and pull-ups. These are functional moves and train the
muscles that we need now and when we get old.
If you enjoy running, weightlifting or CrossFit, so be it, but ensure you
are eating the right type and quantity of nutrients that your body requires to
support your training and that you are getting the right amount of rest.
High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is no doubt one of the best ways to
get stronger and lose fat, but please remember that across the United States,
it’s usually advised and encouraged that you do a fitness test first to gauge
your level and then select a suitable programme that lets you build up to a
safe HIIT workout. Unfortunately in India, fitness tests don’t exist, and
heavy and overweight people engage in HIIT, which surely helps them lose
some weight but at the cost of injury and inflammation.

Safety and exercise

Over the last few years, with an increase in obesity-related diseases, gyms,
and various forms of exercises, the number of exercise-related injuries and
waiting lines outside physiotherapy clinics have also grown.
Exercise is supposed to make you feel better and stronger. You should be
getting more agile and flexible rather than tight and cramped.
It should reduce pain instead of increasing it, and make you feel
energetic, not fatigued. Exercise should leave you craving healthy food and
not items laced with excess salt and sugar.
Injury caused due to exercise can affect one’s lifestyle and quality of life
now, and later as well.
Some of the most common areas of injuries are:

Neck and shoulders (trapezius)

Knees
Lower back
Hip
Most of these injuries are caused due to

Improper form
Overtraining
Neglecting important muscles and only focusing on visually
appealing body parts/muscles
Improper and insufficient warm-up and cool-down
Insufficient and incorrect stretching
Training without a solid goal in mind
Following fad exercise regimes
Insufficient rest and recovery
Ignoring your weaker muscles

There’s a lot of science to exercise.

The best exercises that everyone should be able to do, before getting into
fancier programmes and movements are:

Squats
Lunges
Full unsupported push-ups
Plank (hold for at least 30 seconds and work your way up to a
minute)
V-Sit up (stationary or moving)
5-km walk or 4-km run
Pull-ups
Seated toe reaches
Jumping jacks
High knees

Why these exercises?

I’ve mentioned these exercises because they use all your vital muscles
that are required for day-to-day movement, posture and body alignment.
If you struggle with the exercises mentioned above, it means you should
not be lifting weights, doing kick-boxing or HIIT, or running marathons.
 The exercises listed on the previous page will automatically develop a
strong core for you, which will prevent injury, keep you strong, align your
posture, strengthen your back, help you move better and faster and keep
you strong, agile and flexible.
Doing these exercises with perfect form is sufficient to get you toned and
reach your ideal weight. Mix the above with yoga and Pilates, and you will
have a perfect exercise regime.
Also, sitting is the new smoking. It is essential to aim for activity
throughout the day and not just a one-hour workout. The workout is
rendered quite useless if you spend the rest of your day sitting or lead a
sedentary lifestyle.
As food is such an integral part of fitness and working out, one of the
most important guidelines that you should definitely not ignore is: If you
work out more, you should eat more of the right food, and on the days you
work out less, you should eat less.
 4
SLEEP AND RECOVERY

I think of sleep and recovery as the secret sauce when it comes to burning
belly fat, losing weight and enhancing health and immunity. The most
important factor is to make sure your sleep cycle is optimized. It’s not just
about how many hours of sleep you get, but also about the quality and depth
of your sleep cycles. The University of Chicago has research showing that
individuals who were trying to lose weight lost 55 per cent more body fat
when they rested more and had better quality of sleep than the control group
that was sleep-deprived.1
There is so much going on in the body when you sleep, particularly the
production of hormones. The human growth hormone, which accelerates
healing and regeneration, replenishes energy and builds growth and muscle,
is one of the hormones that is secreted. Lack of it in the body is also
responsible for premature ageing. No amount of anti-ageing creams or
injections will work if you’re not producing this growth hormone.
Stanford University found that deprivation during just one 24-hour period
of sleep leads to an increase in ghrelin, a hormone that makes you want to
eat. It also suppresses leptin, which is necessary for your brain to know you
are feeling satiated. Less leptin makes you keep eating as satiety is delayed.
At the same time, the level of cortisol in the body increases, which causes
the body to store more fat. As discussed earlier, fat gain and the inability to
burn it off is almost always about poor hormonal balance, and this research
proves just how important sleep is to maintaining that balance.2
To understand this process a bit better, it is necessary to understand how
important melatonin is and how it works for your body. Your body starts
producing melatonin as your surroundings get darker and exposure to
artificial light decreases. Without sufficient melatonin, you cannot sleep,
even if you are physically and mentally exhausted. Melatonin is also a
powerful anti-cancer hormone. Tumour growth accelerates when you have
insufficient or disrupted melatonin. Sufficient melatonin is also needed to
interfere and stop the new blood supply tumours require for their rapid
growth.
Melatonin has a connection and association with brown adipose tissues, a
type of fat that helps burn white fat, which is not required in the body. It is
found in your chest, upper shoulders, above your clavicle and in the back of
your neck. Artificial light from your tablets, phones, TVs and alarm clocks
disrupt melatonin production. Cornell University found that even a coin-
sized fibre-optic light in your bedroom can have an impact on it. Because
all this ‘light pollution’ disrupts melatonin levels in the body, sleep is
disturbed, which, in turn, affects other hormones. Natural light, like that
from the moon, has a low luminance factor and doesn’t interfere with
melatonin production. In fact, it signals to the brain to produce more of the
hormone. When we wake up to the rays of the early sun or break of day, the
luminance factor of the sun is such that it automatically decreases
production of melatonin and we wake up. Hence, it is important to adhere to
the day–night cycle of sleep. For people who work night shifts, it is
essential to create complete darkness where they sleep by using
blackout/heavy curtains or eye masks.
Many people sleep for 8–9 hours every night and yet feel tired all the
time, without the desired results of fat loss. They may eat great food,
exercise enough and yet not lose fat because they are sleep-deprived. This is
because most of the magic takes place when you sleep well. It is not enough
to sleep a number of hours, but to also reach that deep anabolic stage, amid
the slow waves of delta that make deep sleep happen. Each phase of sleep is
correlated to specific functions, ranging from regeneration, growth and
detoxification of cells and organs in the body, to make them work better for
weight loss and good health. For example, your liver, which is the main fat
regulator, regenerates and heals while your sleep cycle is deeper.
 Have you ever wondered why your mouth smells when you wake up in
the morning, why you have dirt in your eyes or why your urine is warm and
yellow? All this signifies that your body was detoxifying while you slept,
and the waste is a byproduct of it. Men’s beards grow while they sleep,
signifying growth. Similarly, if you fall and bruise your knee, you wake up
to find a scab, indicating repair and growth while you slept. The body also
experiences fat burn and hormone-balancing during the process. So when
we sleep less or the quality is impacted negatively, all of the above gets
compromised. There is also research showing that conditions like
Alzheimer’s disease may be caused by the brain’s inability to detoxify.3
The human body has a lymphatic system that is the body’s garbage-
disposal system for cellular waste removal. This system does not connect to
your brain because of the blood–brain barrier.
There is no room in the brain for growth, repair and regeneration when it
is overloaded with toxins. Since the lymphatic system cannot detoxify your
brain, the brain has a ‘glymphatic’ system that does the job. This system
pumps cerebral spinal fluid through your brain, which flushes out the waste
and toxins into your body’s circulatory system. The waste is then taken to
your liver and finally eliminated. When you sleep, your brain cells shrink in
size almost 50–60 per cent to allow more space for the cerebral spinal fluid
to flush out toxins and waste, and your glymphatic system gets 8–10 times
more active.
For example, amyloid-beta—a protein that forms the notorious plaque
found in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients—is removed in
significantly greater quantities during sleep. As stated by Time magazine,
‘The findings raise interesting questions about how sleep may affect the
progression of Alzheimer’s disease or other neurodegenerative disorders,
but they also provide a strong warning for anybody who skips sleep.4 The
short version: don’t.’
According to Dr Nedergaard: ‘The brain only has limited energy at its
disposal, and it appears that it must choose between two different functional
states—awake and aware, or asleep and cleaning up. You can think of it like
having a house party. You can either entertain the guests or clean up the
house, but you can’t really do both at the same time.’5
The more toxins your brain has, the more fatigue you feel, which, in turn,
leads to imbalances in the brain and hormones. This doesn’t just impact
immunity, it also creates brain fog, lethargy and forgetfulness, and impedes
your ability to make decisions or think. Also, when your REM (rapid eye
movement) cycle gets disrupted, it can trigger irritability, difficulty in
concentrating and low immunity. These feelings generate uncontrollable
cravings, which can lead to weight gain. When you are trying to build a
business, make a living, raise a family or just have a good time, usually the
easiest thing to sacrifice or skimp on is sleep, and this is something that you
need to change. Who says you can’t have a fun-filled life along with giving
your body and brain the sleep it needs?
The continuous lack of sleep has a cumulative effect and it’s not wise to
think that you will use weekends or holidays to make up for lost sleep. The
human body does not work that way. Melatonin has to be produced,
hormones have to be balanced, and cells need to regenerate, grow and
repair every single day and night. Your body will not wait for the weekend
to do this and match your lifestyle.
My advice is listen to the biofeedback that your body gives you every
day. If you feel tired during the day and constantly yawn, you need more
sleep. If you sleep and wake up tired, you need more sleep. If you’re ill or
in recovery, you need to sleep more than usual. If you work out hard and
intensely, you need more sleep and rest. And don’t turn to sleeping pills to
solve your problem. The following quote from Dr Mercola explains it best:
‘Not only do sleeping pills not address any of the underlying causes of
insomnia, researchers have repeatedly shown that sleeping pills don’t work,
but your brain is being tricked into thinking they do . . . One analysis found
that, on average, sleeping pills help people fall asleep approximately 10
minutes sooner, and increase total sleep time by a mere 15–20 minutes.’6
 5
EMOTIONAL DETOXIFICATION

The amount of stress, both physical and emotional, that people face is so
much more than what it used to be even a few years ago. Stress leads to a
myriad of emotions. Some people express or talk about these emotions and
thus let them out, many just bottle them up. These negative emotions, such
as guilt, anger, jealousy, resentment, insecurity and fear, when not given
expression, slowly weigh down on immunity, eventually making the person
ill.
You cannot leave the mind out of the equation of healing or losing weight
and fat. It plays an important role because your thoughts have a direct
impact on your cells and health. Let’s do a little exercise. I want you to be
angry right now. You can’t, right? You have to have an angry thought to feel
anger. Let’s try again. Try to be sad. Again, you can’t, right? You need a sad
thought to feel sad. You need to experience an emotion or feeling. How do
these feelings and emotions affect our cells? Let me explain with a
question. When you feel happy, sad or angry, where do you feel the
emotion? You feel it all over, and not just in your heart or mind. Billions of
cells in your body vibrate with the emotion or feeling. So, all these cells
could be vibrating with a positive or a negative emotion and, if it’s the
latter, that you feel continuously or for long periods of time, it can lower
your immunity and rob you of energy and health. Observe carefully how
you feel in your body and mind the next time you have a negative thought
and emotion.
Your subconscious has great power. I always ask people to consider the
following example. Most people have the memory of tasting a lemon stored
in their subconscious. Imagine biting into a lemon. You will most likely
start to salivate. Close your eyes and imagine the sourness and taste. You
will salivate more. Just talking about this experience brings up a memory
that is inactive in the subconscious to the conscious mind, where it is
experienced again. Your subconscious mind has collected so many
experiences, thoughts and memories from the time you were a child, and it
takes just one word, person, situation, sight, picture or smell to bring it
‘back to life’ in our conscious mind, which then transforms into a feeling or
an emotion.
Therefore, if you bottle up sad and depressed thoughts or keep thinking
about them, that’s how you will be and feel.
If you keep thinking you can never lose weight and are no good, it’s
unlikely that you will lose weight. But if you keep thinking you are healthy,
that’s how you will feel.
From the time you wake up until you sleep, you are exposed to
newspapers, social media, TV shows, radio shows, gossip, etc. And
everything you see or hear is absorbed by your mind. If you do not live
mindfully, truly aware of your feelings, thoughts, emotions and actions, it
can trigger irritability or anger later in the day.
This is why you need to meditate, spend some time in silence, pray or
visualize your happier self every single day. You manifest what you
visualize. The next time you feel negative or angry, take some time out and
sit comfortably with your eyes closed and go deeper into the space behind
that negative feeling. For example, you may think a person has triggered the
emotion. But go deeper still and you may find a deeper connection to that
emotion and person, and that’s what you need to be aware of and work
with.
There used to be a time when a bad day was just a bad day. But now
people tend to numb their feelings using alcohol, smoking, socializing, junk
food or mindless TV watching. Instead of acknowledging our feelings, we
cope by suppressing them, filling our emotional void with habits and
lifestyles that work like a Band-Aid, never making us face the root cause.
When it comes to weight gain or the inability to lose weight, the most
common coping mechanism is to ‘eat oneself out of a problem’.
Unfortunately, that never solves the problem and, in fact, makes it worse.
Similarly, alcohol, drugs and tobacco tend to distract us from feeling our
feelings. There is nothing wrong with indulging in them, but be aware and
mindful, because they can sneakily become habits that in the long run don’t
address the root cause and eventually depress you.
Today, like diets and exercise, spirituality has also become a fad. People
jump from chanting to meditation to other spiritual practices just to tick a
box. It is not done mindfully and hence people still feel incomplete. They
do not let the benefits of their practice slip into the rest of their day. For
example, after their 30 minutes of breathing or pranayama, they forget that
they should also practise deep breathing or be conscious of their breath
during the day. Emotional detoxification is important throughout the day
and you need to strive to live in the present moment or at least come back to
the present moment when you get caught up in the chaos of the day.
The root cause of at least 86 per cent of my breast- cancer cases
diagnosed over the last two years in India was found to be linked to
patients’ emotional issues. At the time of detection of the cancer, the clients
mentioned that they were experiencing chronic stress, or something
emotional or tragic was going on in their lives. These worrying statistics
reinforce the need for you to look within to understand who you are and
find that spiritual space and balance that help you make better decisions.
So many of my patients struggle to lose weight. When I gently encourage
them to focus on emotional detoxification, the results are amazing. Most of
them become more gentle with themselves, and their bodies. They realize
what they really want to achieve and their goal becomes less centred on
what other people want. They understand that comparing themselves with
other women and men or what they see in the media is only robbing them of
peace and happiness. This is when they understand the emotions and
triggers behind cravings and the need to either accept or let go. And thus the
weight loss begins.
When you truly start valuing who you are and accepting yourself, you
become clear about how you want to achieve this goal. This mindless chase
of diet plans and jumping from one exercise programme to another is
fruitless. So stop, step back, take a break and start looking within. Who are
you trying to be like? Who are you trying to impress? Do you really need
your physical body to define who you are? Physical attraction is real and
the fact that we feel good when we look good is real, but it shouldn’t be the
only thing that you believe you should be accepted for. The emotional,
spiritual and intellectual self too, in combination with your physical self,
makes you whole and beautiful. To arrive at this, you need to look within.
Your body will change as you grow older. Your looks will change too.
And if it’s just your physical self that you are interested in, it will depress
you more and more as you can’t stop ageing. Of course, there is the option
of cosmetic surgery, but how long can you keep falling back on it?
In India, especially, a lot women and men strive to lose weight just before
they get married, but tend to put it all back on after the wedding. I find this
kind of motivation terribly wrong. You need to lose weight not for others
and what they will say about you at the wedding, but to truly feel good in
your skin, be healthy and fit and prevent disease. Another aspect that I fail
to understand, although I see a lot of positive change happening now, is that
men expect their wives to be a certain weight while it’s okay for them to
have large bellies and be unfit. Shouldn’t both of them as a couple strive to
be fit for health reasons and not just vanity?
When I diagnose and ask people when the weight gain or sickness
started, it’s always when emotional or mental stress was at its highest, in the
form of bad relationships, anger at someone or self, low self-worth,
fighting, insecurity, divorce, family problems, OCD, violence, sexual abuse,
lack of or no sex, etc. All these trigger a feeling of being unsafe. And that
feeling comes up when there is a reminder of the experience. You have to
let go of instances when someone put you down, said something in anger or
didn’t approve of something you were doing to please them. You have to
somehow reclaim this feeling of safety so that your body can let go. You
need to reimagine the situation because the body doesn’t know the
difference between a real and imaginary experience. Athletes use this
technique to a great degree as the brain and nervous system get activated in
the same coordinated sequence as they would in the actual scenario. When
you use visualization to relieve the trauma you faced, your body can totally
reimagine and relive what happened, and regain that sense of security.
Remember what I said about the body not knowing the difference
between a real and imagined experience? While it is often detrimental
because the stress is recreated, you can use it to your benefit by
reprogramming the experience. You can even do this to relieve physical
pain. For example, if you have a headache, touch your forehead with your
finger. Imagine the pain is being transferred to your finger and then flick it
away.
Your subconscious is in charge of your body’s unconscious processes,
such as how much oxygen you need or how much your heart beats.
Similarly, how much fat your body stores or does not store is also a
decision, albeit a subconscious one. Visualization is like a language that you
can use to talk to your subconscious. For example, you can’t give directions
to someone who does not speak your language, but you can draw them a
map and they will instantly know what you mean. Visualization is like a
universal language. When you form an image of the way you want to look
and keep it in your mind when it is calm and powerful—in silence, in
meditation, in the right environment—your subconscious understands. This
technique is also like using your muscles, the more you use it the stronger it
gets.
Just as important are accepting and letting go, the two magic skills that
can relieve you of stress and negative emotions. These two skills take
enormous amounts of effort, practice and discipline to perfect, but once you
put them into practice, they work better than any other stress-relieving skill.

Body image

You are constantly sold the idea that you have to look beautiful and
glamorous, whether by having a diet soda or being on a particular exercise
programme. And why is it that everyone wants to be beautiful? It’s because
everyone wants to be loved. From the moment we are born, we acquaint
love with safety. So, when you’re not being loved by your family, friends or
partner, your primal trigger is activated and you feel stressed. In society and
relationships where we look for appreciation, sex, approval, comfort and
understanding, what we actually are looking for is love. Some people
equate being loved with being beautiful, but it is a very vulnerable way of
living. Only the creation of a safety net will ensure that you are not at the
mercy of everything. Then you know your true worth, which is not fuelled
by fear or insecurity. Then the people who love you do so for the right
reasons. You are then not bothered about the people who don’t love you.
This way, you can truly be yourself and not get pulled in different
directions.
Now let’s dive into the most powerful lifestyle choices that have helped
tens of thousands of people across the globe to lose weight and keep it off
without fad diets and exercise programmes.
 PART II

THE MOST POWERFUL LIFESTYLE

CHANGES AND HABITS TO LOSE
WEIGHT AND KEEP IT OFF
 #1 RAW UNTIL LUNCH

This lifestyle change encourages you to eat only raw foods—fruits,

vegetable juices, soaked nuts and seeds—until lunchtime.
You can have a fruit with some nuts/seeds in the morning, a glass of
vegetable juice later in the day, with the next meal being lunch, which will
actually be your first cooked meal of the day. You may have another fruit
again as a mid-morning snack in case you get hungry, but make sure to stop
your fruit intake 30–45 minutes before lunch.
Raw foods are detoxifying in nature. The more you help your body
eliminate toxins, the faster you can drop that fat. Raw foods are best
absorbed on an empty stomach as they require digestive enzymes different
from those for cooked food to be broken down into nutrients, sugar and
fibre. Absorption is highest when fruits and raw vegetables are eaten on an
empty stomach.
If you usually wake up and drink a lot of water to flush out your system,
you should continue doing that. You may have tea or coffee post your fruit
intake as well, although to get the best out of this lifestyle change, you
should have just fruits and water until lunch.
If you are diabetic, it’s recommended you follow up the fruits with nuts
to reduce the spike in blood-sugar levels (discuss this with your doctor or
nutritionist first, in case you have been told not to eat nuts).
Don’t eat fruits right after a meal. Because they require different
enzymes, they are digested more quickly. After a meal, they mix with the
other food, and rot and ferment in the gut, causing indigestion, acidity,
burping and flatulence, and most of the nutrients are destroyed and hence
not absorbed. This is why you should always eat fruits on an empty stomach
or 45 minutes to an hour before meals.
 Avoid fruits after sunset. Fruits are simple carbs and break down quickly
into energy. After sunset, you should be preparing for rest and eventually
sleep and therefore will need more complex carbs, high-quality protein and
quality fats that the body will use for a number of functions while you
sleep. If you’re going to be awake late into the night, then it may be okay to
have a late-evening snack of fruits, but again, on an empty stomach.
Eat your fruits whole rather than juicing them. As juice, fruits lose most
of their fibre and nutrients, causing rapid spikes in blood-sugar levels.
Chew your fruit and really savour every bite of it. Remember, digestion
begins in the mouth. Not only is the chewing good for your teeth, the
natural sweetness of fruits also sends a signal to your brain for the release
of the satiety hormone and reduces craving for other sweet food.
When you do start to make this lifestyle change, you may feel hungry at
first, mostly because your body is used to a heavy breakfast. Fruits actually
provide a lot of energy to the cells and the body, but because you are used
to a more elaborate breakfast, you may not feel the results initially. You will
get used to it two days into the change. Most of my clients have made it a
daily lifestyle change while some choose to do it just once or twice a week.
Pick what works for you and give it a shot. Check out some of this amazing
feedback from those who have adopted this change.

Shruti Bakshi: I do it on most days. I used to get hungry in the beginning

but now I stay quite full, so much so that the portion of the next meal is
reduced. I feel my skin glowing and my weight falling; this really works
and saves so much of my morning time.

Kanika Gulrajani: I have been following this fruit breakfast for the past 10–
12 months. I used to have a lot of acne and acne scars, but now my skin is
clear and I don’t crave sugar throughout the day.

Deepti Rawat: I never used to eat fruits, but now I can see my skin glow, I
feel light, my system clearance is great, and my weight-control and energy
levels are good—otherwise tiredness was my major complain.
Sunita Kedia: Along with me, my husband has also started fruits until
lunch; he eats 2–3 fruits. And even without exercising, he has lost some
weight around his waist. His skin is glowing. No acidity problem either.

Shilpa Chopra: I have lost weight. Especially around the abdomen.

Everyone has been complimenting me lately.

Shareeka Hegde: My weight is in control and I have lost some inches. I had
dry skin, but now my skin is better. Moreover, it’s become a habit now.

Alka Kapoor: I am experiencing weight loss and fewer cravings. I also feel
more energetic, positive, light, and my stamina has increased.

Vima Viswam: There’s no craving for junk food now. I’m happy to have
fruits and veggies—never imagined this happening before.

Anita Singh: Yes, energy level is very good since I adopted the fruit
breakfast from Monday to Friday into my lifestyle. In the evenings, I eat
home-made snacks. My weight is very much in control in spite of eating so
much all of last month.
 #2 OXYGEN: VITAMIN O

With the rapid pace at which the world is moving, complicated and
expensive solutions seem to be on the rise and yet more people are sicker
and unhealthier. More healthy people are also struggling to knock off those
last few extra kilos or midriff fat.
What you may need is simple, inexpensive and free, and yet taken for
granted and underutilized: oxygen, or as I like to call it, vitamin O.
We just don’t breathe enough. Stop right now and observe how you
breathe. Are you breathing to your full capacity? Are you breathing from
your chest or belly? Your answer will mostly likely be ‘no’ and you will
notice that you are breathing from the chest.
The correct way to belly-breathe: Sit with your back erect. Put your hand
on your belly. Now take a deep breath. As you slowly inhale, your belly and
hand should rise. As you exhale, your belly and hand should fall back
down. Think of your stomach as a balloon that inflates and deflates with
your breath.
The more you eat, the deeper you should breathe. When you take in
enough vitamin O, fat is broken down and your intestines absorb all the
nutrition from the food you eat. When you breathe correctly while you eat,
your body fills up much quicker and you end up eating less than you
normally would. So practise this: before you eat anything, sit with your
back erect (it’s also a great time to offer thanks and gratitude for the meal
you are about to eat and bless your food). Take three deep breaths from
your belly. Inhale comfortably and make sure you exhale slow and long
each time. Between every bite, take one deep breath. End your meal with
three deep breaths.
 The more stressed you get, the more deeply you should breathe, to
counter the rise in cortisol and blood pressure. Even the inflammation and
pain that may be caused due to a rise in these is soothed when oxygen hits
the cells. It’s also what helps your hair grow strong and your skin glow.
Breathing correctly is essential while exercising too. You can complete a
well-planned workout in 30 minutes and keep your cortisol levels in check
when you don’t have 45 minutes or an hour to spare. Breathe deeply,
particularly when you are doing yoga, by aligning and coordinating your
breath with your movement.
So make sure you begin and end the day with deep breathing or
pranayama.
 #3 CORRECT YOUR VITAMIN D3 LEVELS

Almost all of my patients and clients have critically low levels of vitamin
D3 when they come for the first consultation. Low D3 levels plague
thousands of people across the world. Most of them still consider this
vitamin to be a vitamin necessary for bone strength, but it plays many
critical roles in the human body, from immunity to weight loss. Besides
playing a crucial role in the establishment and maintenance of calcium in
the body, vitamin D also acts as an effective regulator of cell growth and
differentiation that is specific to cancer.
The following deplete vitamin D3 in the body:

Aerated drinks
Smoking
More than 2–3 cups of tea and coffee per day.
Laxatives, diuretics, cholesterol medication
Stress
Junk food
Lack of exercise
Lack of calcium

Clinical studies now show that vitamin D deficiency is associated with four
of the most common cancers:

Breast
Prostate
Colon
Skin1
Low vitamin D3 levels have been linked to diabetes, heart disease, skin
health and even multiple sclerosis.
You must get your vitamin D3 levels checked every six months. Don’t
just make sure it reaches the lowest level. Rather, try to make sure it gets
closer to the higher range of your lab test.
Good sources of vitamin D are mushrooms, Brussels sprouts, sprouted
mung, fish, egg yolk, low-fat dairy and chicken. Exposure to sunlight is the
best way for vitamin D to be synthesized in the body.
 #4 FIX YOUR ARTHRITIS, BACK, JOINT,
NECK AND KNEE PAIN

There is a difference between a treatment plan and a healing plan. For

example, you might have been advised to refrain from exercises to avoid
any aggravation of joint or bone pains. The fact, however, is that complete
immobility can only increase body weight, thereby worsening your case.
We rather focus on healing the root cause of joint pains and include
practices that can alleviate the ailment and condition. Do you spend a lot of
time indoors during the day? Are you too busy to regularly be exposed to
direct sunlight? Do you use sunscreen? If you answered yes to most of these
questions, there is a good chance that you are vitamin D–deficient, and that
this deficiency is linked to the perpetuation of your rheumatoid arthritis, or
joint, back, neck or knee pain. Over the last few years, I have seen how
people with vitamin D deficiencies have gotten off painkillers and
medications that they had been taking for years by just getting their vitamin
D levels in order, along with making small lifestyle changes, like eating
balanced meals, increasing physical activity and resting more.
Pain is biofeedback from the human body; you must always acknowledge
it. When a child or an adult is vitamin D–deficient, they are unable to
absorb enough calcium from their diet to fulfil the body’s requirements.
Inability to absorb enough calcium results in an increase in the production
of the parathyroid hormone (PTH), which efficiently removes calcium from
the skeleton to maintain the blood calcium level essential for neuromuscular
and metabolic activities.
With the rise of autoimmune diseases and the known biological
interdependency between vitamin D and the immune system, it is no
surprise that many recent studies show a strong link between vitamin D and
autoimmune conditions. In most cancer patients and patients with lifestyle
diseases, I see low levels of vitamin D3. Working to increase this rapidly
improved their immunity.
The world is seeing a steady increase in D3-deficient children and adults,
and we are seeing a steady increase in diseases caused by ‘poor immunity’
and, of course, innumerable cases of people with aches, arthritis, joint
pains, etc.
Earlier in the book, you read about how to tackle and reverse acidity,
which has a direct correlation with pains and ailments. Make sure you don’t
neglect this aspect.
 #5 MAINTAIN UNIFORM GAPS BETWEEN
MEALS

Do not keep gaps of more than 3–3.5 hours between your main meals, or
you will get acidity. As explained earlier, your body cannot effectively lose
weight when your body environment is acidic. Why 3–3.5 hours? That’s
how long a normal meal takes to get digested. Your body expects food after
every such period and produces hydrochloric acid in the stomach regardless
of whether you eat. If there is no food for the acid to act upon, it eventually
leads to the destruction of your mucosal linings and digestive enzymes
along with acid reflux, bloating, flatulence and indigestion. The body reacts
differently when you are asleep or when you are fasting. When you sleep,
the body is involved in several functions like growth, repair, detoxification
and hormonal balance, and that is why you don’t need to eat when you
sleep.
 #6 TRY TO EAT EACH MEAL AT THE SAME
TIME EVERY DAY.

Your body gets used to food at a certain time each day, almost like muscle
memory. Try to give your body each meal at approximately the same time
every day for better hormonal balance and digestion, and to prevent that
dangerous acidity. Remember, weight loss is all about the hormones being
in balance.
 #7 CHEW YOUR WAY TO WEIGHT LOSS

The human body is a miracle. The way the brain and body function and
recover from the deadliest of diseases is a constant source of wonder. So is
digestion, a wonderfully complex process that gives you all the energy and
nutrients you need to live. As we’ve discussed in detail earlier, digestion
begins in the mouth.
The more you chew your food, the cleaner you keep your intestines,
stomach and colon, because the body can quickly cleanse itself when
digestion happens the right way.
By chewing your food well, you reduce the chances of acidity and
heartburn, and end up eating less, because your stomach has sufficient time
to send a signal to your brain that you are full. So:

Less food intake = fewer calories = weight loss

Best of all, you get to actually taste and relish every morsel. Many of us
eat so fast that we never really get to taste the food and the flavours, and
end up eating mindlessly, thinking we are still hungry.
So the next meal you eat, do so really slowly. Take a spoon of food, chew
it several times, savour the flavour and taste, and then swallow. Put your
spoon down. Then take the next. You will find yourself getting fuller
quickly, and then you should stop eating. This will become a habit and you
will serve yourself less food and probably lose the unhealthy weight you
may be carrying.
Diseases are caused, in many cases, by overeating. We always think
however much we eat is the right amount, but it may be too much if you
have been eating your meals too fast.
 Your mealtime is important; respect it. It’s personal time between you
and your body, where you feed and nourish it to keep healthy and strong,
and live well.
If you master this lifestyle change, you can enjoy all the food you like in
moderation.
 #8 DRINK SMARTLY

Besides stress, one of the biggest obstacles to losing belly fat is the sneaky
culprit alcohol.
A night out, loads of fun over a few drinks, shots, champagne and
cocktails can cause fat to accumulate around the abdominal region. Even
though you may eat right and work out, that fat will remain.
Alcohol in moderation is okay. Consuming it spread across the week is a
better idea than binge-drinking over the weekend.
Here are some of my tips to limit the damage when it comes to alcohol
and fat gain.

Drink a lot of water: Between every drink, drink one whole glass of
water. If you can add some lemon to this, even better. Water helps your
liver and kidneys work better and lemon balances the pH of an already
acidic liver. It helps detox your liver and flush out toxins quicker.
Mixers: Avoid aerated drinks like the plague. Not only do they
contribute to fat, they also reduce your immune function to almost 50
per cent, making you vulnerable to disease/infection. As if that was not
enough, consumption of these drinks also plays havoc with your sugar
levels and cravings.
Eat bananas: One of the main reasons people accumulate abdominal
fat is because alcohol depletes choline, a fat-blasting B vitamin that
acts directly on the genes that cause fat storage in the abdomen.
Bananas are rich in choline and help the body replace it.

If we incorporate lifestyle changes that can help us unwind a little every

day, we may be able to work harder and enjoy what we do, and not feel the
need to binge-drink.
 Overdoing it with alcohol increases the level of toxicity in your body, so
much, that it takes days for your cells and body to recover. It wreaks havoc
on your triglyceride levels, cholesterol, blood-sugar levels, blood pressure,
circulation, liver and kidney health, mental and sexual health, immunity and
a lot more.
I advise my clients to enjoy a drink every day rather than letting the urge
build up.
Remember, the lowest-calorie drink is a glass of Prosecco, followed by
champagne, red wine and other varieties of white wine.
 #9 THE POWER OF LEMON WATER

Rich in vitamins C and B, riboflavin and minerals such as calcium,

phosphorous and magnesium, lemon has been used widely all through
history in cuisine, medicine, desserts, healing brews and cosmetic products.
Those who are allergic to lemon or get throat pain when they have it should
skip this, but for the rest, incorporating this fruit into your diet is probably
one of the most powerful lifestyle changes, especially for losing weight.
Lemon alone won’t burn fat, but it adds value to the body in many ways
that contribute to effective weight loss. In India, it’s a tradition to sprinkle
lemon juice over most food, because it helps increase the alkalinity of the
meal, which, in turn, leads to better digestion and assimilation. Warm water
and lemon stimulates your metabolism, which, in turn, burns more calories.
If you are at your ideal weight, you can have a lemon a day. If you are
underweight, half a lemon a day is good. Have 2 lemons over the course of
the day if you are overweight.
Lemon juice is also one of the best remedies for acidity and bloating. The
juice is acidic in its raw form but when it mixes with saliva, it becomes
alkaline, which creates a healthy environment in the body, and facilitates
healing.
The benefits of drinking lemon juice mixed with water forms a very long
list, a few of which I have mentioned below:

1. As a liver tonic: Use this concoction to detoxify your liver.

2. To provide relief from toothache.
3. As the juice is rich in potassium, it is good for your heart and for
controlling high blood pressure, reducing mental stress and nausea.
4. To alleviate asthma or respiratory problems.
5. For treating rheumatism and arthritis.
6. Lemon juice mixed with organic jaggery is great for people who
smoke, as this replenishes vitamin C lost by the body because of
smoking.
7. As a natural blood purifier.
8. For gargling if you have a sore throat.

The properties of lemon are anti-ageing, whether consumed as a drink or

applied on the skin. You can even apply the juice to your scalp to reduce
dandruff, and give shine and volume to your hair. Lemon juice rubbed onto
the face and allowed to dry gets rid of blackheads and acne, and reduces
wrinkles.
So fill a bottle of water and throw in thin slices of lemon with the skin.
Sip on this throughout the day. Additionally, start and end your day with
a glass of warm water, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and 1/2 teaspoon of
organic honey. Observe changes in your health and skin in 2–3 weeks.
 #10 ERADICATE ACIDITY AND LOSE
WEIGHT

Acidity is an issue that plagues millions of people around the world, and
yet it is one of the simplest things you can sort out or reverse using simple
lifestyle changes.
First, let’s go back to school for a minute. If you remember the pH scale,
7 in the middle indicates a neutral pH, 7 and above is alkaline and 7 and
below is acidic. The human body requires acid in the stomach to digest the
food you eat. Problems arise when there is excess acid in the body. An
increasing number of people suffer from acid reflux, acidity, burping,
bloating and flatulence. These are all forms of acidity in different ways,
which, if not handled properly at the right time, can cause innumerable
ailments such as cancer, diabetes, poor skin quality, the inability to lose
weight, poor hair quality and much more.
Every cell in your body requires oxygen for the health of those cells. In
an acidic body, these cells become anaerobic, which means oxygen doesn’t
reach them completely. When your cells are deprived of oxygen, the body
starts facing problems.
As outlined earlier, popping antacids is not the solution, and they also
have their own side effects. Your body can even become immune to them,
which means you may have to take higher dosages. Because most antacids
have magnesium which causes diarrhoea, the aluminium in antacids causes
constipation. If you have high blood pressure and/or suffer from kidney
disease, these antacids can wreak havoc on the medication you take.
Here are a few changes you can try instead:
1. To reiterate, don’t keep a gap of more than 4 hours between meals:. If
there’s no food in your stomach every few hours, the acid has nothing
to act upon. So it acts on the inner mucosal lining of your stomach,
causing ulcers and acid reflux. You may have experienced this if
you’ve ever felt a hot burn in your throat and oesophagus. To adhere to
this lifestyle change, you will need to plan your breakfast, lunch,
evening snack and dinner in advance.
2. Don’t eat your meals too quickly: When you don’t chew your food,
your stomach needs to produce more acid to break down these larger
chunks. More acid means more acidity. A lot of nutrients in your food
die in the presence of this excess acid.
3. Watch the kind of food you eat: When you eat wholesome food such as
fruits, vegetables, lentils, whole grains, seeds and nuts, your body
produces the right amount of acid to break it down. But the human
body is not designed to process junk food, processed food, aerated
drinks, or excess sugar and salt. Your body produces a lot of acid to
break down this unnatural food.
4. Be mindful of the medication you are on: A lot of medicines cause
acidity, as your body requires a lot of acid to break down the medicine.
So, when you take antibiotics, make sure you also have probiotics and
B-complex, because antibiotics wipe out the good and bad bacteria
from your intestines, making your body more acidic.
5. Monitor your water consumption: So many people drink less water
than they need to. Even a 1 per cent drop of water in your body can
lead to fatigue, acidity and innumerable problems. So make sure you
have the right amount of water in your system every day (see the next
tip for how much water is ideal for you).
6. Practising yoga, pranayama and certain breathing exercises can reduce
acidity. Every time you inhale, you help your body balance its acidic
and alkaline levels naturally. Check my recommendation for how you
should breathe during mealtimes.
Your body has a pH regulator that automatically has the ability to keep your
body alkaline. But your lifestyle can throw this out of whack. To correct
this, make sure you drink lemon water, or eat a bowl of cucumber, carrot or
other raw vegetables, especially when you eat processed food.
These simple lifestyle changes can help you get rid of even the most
severe case of acidity.
 #11 THE ART OF DRINKING WATER

There’s the art of eating and there’s also the art of drinking water. Your
body is made up of 70–80 billion cells, and 75–80 per cent of these cells
live in water. They require water for metabolic activity, strong immunity,
weight loss and cellular function. The way you drink water is extremely
important for your health. Don’t blindly follow the idea that chugging down
as much water as you can is always good for your health.
You must sip your water slowly. This allows the water to mix with your
saliva, which is highly alkaline in nature. You want saliva to get to the
stomach so that it can stabilize any excess acid.
Have a glass of water 15–30 minutes before your meal and 15–30
minutes after your meal. It should preferably be lukewarm or at room
temperature. If you must drink water during your meals, it should be a very
small amount. You don’t want to drink too much because you want to leave
enough space in your stomach for digestive activity. Too much water also
dilutes your digestive acids, which, in turn, affectsdigestion.
Drink when you are thirsty. But don’t wait to get too thirsty. The human
body has a defence mechanism and a warning mechanism. It tells you when
you’re hungry. If you really listen to it, you will also know when you’re
thirsty. If you stay in an air-conditioned environment for long hours, you
need to be careful, because sometimes you may not realize you’re thirsty
because of the air temperature. Two other indicators that you aren’t drinking
enough water are if your lips tend to get dry quickly and if your urine is
yellow. Ideally, your urine should be a pale white, crystal white or pale
straw yellow. But do note that certain medications and certain vitamins,
such as vitamin C, can make your urine extremely dark.
 When you chug water, most of it just passes out of your system. What
you want for good metabolism and good cellular energy and activity is for
that water to be absorbed into your cells. That’s why you should sip it.
When you do so slowly, you’ll find that you don’t need too much water, or
even the common recommendation of 2.5–3.5 litres. It really depends on
your lifestyle and the kind of food you eat. When you have a diet rich in
fruits and vegetables, you won’t need to drink as much water, because these
have high water content.
At the same time, if you drink too much tea and/or coffee, water and
vitamins are flushed out from the body because these beverages act as
diuretics. So for every glass of coffee you drink, you need to have two
glasses of water to replenish the amount that’s flushed out.
Your digestive system can rob your body of energy to digest all the food
you eat, particularly if you eat a lot of junk food. That’s why it is essential
to minimize the energy spent on digestion and enhance the process by
sipping water slowly.
 #12 SWEAT YOUR WEIGHT OFF

When was the last time you worked up a really good sweat? It need not
have been during a workout. It could just have been in the sweltering
summer heat.
No one likes to sweat when dressed up, or headed to office or for a
meeting or dinner, but do make sure you incorporate enough activity in your
routine so you work up a sweat, as it has some amazing health benefits.
I believe that anything the body does or produces naturally is because of
its profound intelligence—be it sweat, dirt in the corners of the eyes, the
smell in your mouth or sticky goo in the nose. These are natural
mechanisms of the body working to expel, clean, eliminate or heal, and you
need to look at them as indicators of your body trying to tell you something.
Skin is the largest eliminatory organ in the human body. It consists of
trillions of pores that help the body eliminate toxic waste that causes deadly
disease, hair fall, organ failure and low immunity, and can considerably
slow down weight loss. Did you know that sweat can eliminate more lead
than your daily urine output?
Even a little sweat is enough for your body to detox. You don’t need to
overtrain for that benefit. If you use creams and cosmetics, these may block
the skin’s pores.
A study showed that a woman’s body absorbs 2–3 kg of cosmetic
chemicals in a year.1
I’m not an expert when it comes to cosmetics and creams, but I know
enough to say that pure coconut oil is one of the best skin applicants for
almost all skin issues or beauty purposes, as it gets directly absorbed and
retained below skin level without blocking the pores, hence keeping the
eliminatory system working.
 However, remember that sweating will result in your body losing
valuable fluids and electrolytes. Be sure to stay well hydrated every time
you build up a sweat and replace the electrolytes naturally by drinking
coconut water or a quarter teaspoon of salt mixed with 3 litres of filtered
water.
 #13 THE MAGIC WEIGHT-LOSS TEA

Add this magic tea to your daily regime and lifestyle. You can use a base
of black or green tea, or just make an infusion with water and the following
ingredients:

1 square-inch piece of fresh ginger root

Squeeze of a lemon
2 cups of water
2–3 peppercorns
1 cinnamon stick
2 cardamom pods, crushed
2 cloves

Boil, simmer, reduce to half, strain and serve hot with or without pure
honey.
This amazing potion is detoxifying and highly anti-inflammatory, and has
the power to rapidly decrease Candida and yeast infections that inhibit
weight loss. Ginger is essential to this magic tea recipe due to its amazing
benefits. It helps in boosting immunity and cellular health, controlling high
blood pressure, lowering cholesterol and stimulating blood rush to sex
organs. It also prevents and treats the flu, digestive issues, menstrual pain,
PMS, cancer (by building immunity and cellular health), arthritis,
joint/bone pain and ageing.
Over the past few years, I have used and shared this remedy with so
many clients and friends for so many conditions, and it has never failed to
produce the desired results.
 #14 ADD RAW FOOD TO YOUR DAILY DIET

The inner lining of your blood vessels has an ultra-thin set of sensitive
cells called endothelial cells. The function of these cells is to regulate blood
pressure and blood flow. When these endothelial cells are in good
condition, they allow communication between the cells and absorption of
vital oxygen and nutrient-rich blood, forming the foundation of good health
and immunity. Oxidative stress caused by poor eating habits, such as too
much sugar, salt, stress, improper sleep and inadequate exercise affects
these cells. In such cases, the body’s response is inflammation, which alters
the way your blood flows and increases production of nitric oxide, which
signals your arteries to dilate, and leads to high blood pressure.
The addition of raw food to your diet can cure all of the above. The
nutritional value of cooked food is extremely low. This is because the soil is
depleted in nutrients, which means plants that grows in this soil also lack
nutrition. So, by the time vegetables reach your table, they are already
devoid of most of their goodness. Cooking, steaming or frying them kills
more of the simple nutrition.
I am not advocating a diet completely of raw food. You should aim for 50
per cent raw and 50 per cent cooked food, and then try to increase it to 70
per cent raw and 30 per cent cooked.
Fruits, raw vegetables (whole or juiced), soaked nuts, germinated seeds,
etc., can all help you shed weight as well. This way your body gets enzymes
from raw food, which is responsible for most of the repair in your
endothelial cells. These enzymes also line the mucosal lining in your
stomach, your intestines and colon, leading to better digestion.
So if you start off with fruits until lunch, as mentioned in tip #1, you
would already have taken the first step. At lunch, try to add some raw
vegetables along with cooked food, such as a salad. Your evening snack
could contain nuts or seeds, even if they’re merely added as garnishing. At
dinner, the addition could be just a glass of vegetable juice or a bowl of
salad. So the idea is that at every meal, you’re eating something raw as well
as cooked. If you can’t manage to eat 50 per cent raw and 50 per cent
cooked food, 30 per cent raw food would be a great start as well.
In the monsoons, avoid raw leafy vegetables because of pesticide
contamination, and stick to peeled carrots, cucumbers and beetroots. You
can even juice them.
 #15 LIMIT SOMATOSTATIN PRODUCTION IN
YOUR BODY

One mistake I see a lot of people making all the time is the choice of food
they consume after their workout. If you eat something that has refined
sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, which includes sports drinks, coloured
drinks, sugary protein bars, cupcakes and chocolates, you are wiping out all
the good work you did by exercising. You may feel that your body will burn
those calories rapidly, but that’s the mistake most people make.
For the last few years, I’ve been observing marathon runners. Despite
being able to complete marathons or their intensive trainings, quite a few of
them have pot bellies. That doesn’t make sense, because if you’re training
that much, you should have the body of a runner. But most people have
excess fat because they have cupcakes or protein bars after runs. As
explained earlier, this is so problematic because of the production of a
hormone called somatostatin. Somatostatin is produced in the hypothalamus
region of the brain and an increase in its production leads to a decrease in
thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) and human growth hormone (HGH).
HGH helps you lose weight and build lean muscle mass.
Somatostatin is also produced in the pancreatic region and when the level
of the hormone increases, insulin decreases. By now, you know in detail
what happens when you have low levels of insulin. As somatostatin is also
produced in the stomach, it inhibits secretion of gastrin, which is required
for digestion.
This doesn’t mean you should never have anything with high glucose and
high-fructose corn syrup if you’re really craving it, but one change you
should make is to wait 2–2.5 hours after any sort of workout. Because
somatostatin makes the body store fat, and reduces HGH and TSH, people
feel fatigued after a run, even though they’ve eaten well.
Elevated sugar levels also deplete potassium, magnesium, copper and
trace minerals in your brain and body when you’re training or running.
That’s why people may have spasms in between workouts or runs.
Replace all the high-sugar food you have cravings for with coconut
water, lemon water and jaggery, and water with Himalayan pink salt, as
they make for the best recovery drinks.
 #16 THE POWER OF MAINTAINING A FOOD
JOURNAL

I cannot tell you how many times clients who approach me for weight loss
insist that they are eating the right food at the right time and in the right
quantities, that they sleep for 7–8 hours and that their exercise programme
is on track. When I dive deeper into each day of the previous week, they
start talking about all the chocolates that they forgot to mention, or the
interrupted workout they had, or the 3–4 hours of sleep on Friday, Saturday
and Sunday. Most of us don’t remember how we did in terms of food, sleep
and exercise the previous week, and that’s why journaling is so powerful.
Clients are shocked to see how much they ate, slept or worked out when
they write in the journal regularly. This does not mean they weren’t being
truthful. They just get so caught up in their day and lives that they don’t
keep track of their habits.
About 80 per cent of my clients who did this for 3 months said they
began to enjoy the experience at the end of the day. Taking out their
notebook, reflecting on the day—from the time they woke up until bedtime,
what they ate, how much they slept the previous night and how much they
exercised—many said it was a therapeutic exercise. They found it to be
motivating, and it left them with a feeling of accomplishment if they
recorded a ‘good day’ of eating and exercising. I also asked many of my
clients to record their feelings, emotions and meditation/pranayama times as
well.
You’ll also be able to tell if the changes in your body are consistent. So,
for example, if you lose weight in weeks 1 and 2 and then it stagnates, or
you gain some in week 3, you’ll be able to correct what contributed to this.
 I love food journaling and encourage all of you looking to lose weight to
really give this some serious thought. It doesn’t take more than 5 minutes at
the end of your day to do this. Use an app or a notebook. I personally prefer
a good old diary. It just helps me feel connected to my inner self when I
actually write with a pen. Choose what works for you, but I can promise
you this is one of the most powerful lifestyle habits.
 #17 START THE ANCIENT PRACTICE OF OIL
PULLING TO DETOXIFY, LOSE WEIGHT AND
ENHANCE HEALTH

This is an age-old Indian practice that originated in Ayurveda and dates

back about 3000 years. The process involves using a tablespoon of a really
good-quality cold-pressed or wet coconut oil. People also use sesame oil or
olive oil. Hold the oil in your mouth first thing in the morning before you
brush and swish it around your teeth, mouth and gums. Start out doing this
for 5 minutes every day and slowly build up to 10–15 minutes. Be careful to
never gargle or swallow the oil; as it pulls out toxins, bacteria, viruses and
fungi out of your mouth. Make sure to spit it out into the sink. If you live in
a very cold place, you’re better off spitting it out into your garbage because
you don’t want it clogging your drain pipes.
Your mouth houses different bacteria, germs, pathogens, viruses and
fungi. These organisms survive because of the moisture. The human body
constantly comes into contact with many toxins and uses a lot of energy to
get rid of these. This is why most people feel fatigued when there’s a toxic
overload in the body. The simple process of oil pulling, which is nothing
but swishing oil over the gums, tongue and mouth constantly for anywhere
between 5 minutes to 20 minutes will pull toxins out of your mouth. It also
gives you a chance to boost your immunity.
Swishing whitens teeth over time as well as strengthens the gums. Most
people have bacteria called streptococcus in their mouths, which is the
number one bacteria that causes decaying of teeth and cavities. Oil pulling
has the ability to control this decaying and actually heal cavities too.
When you reduce toxicity through something as simple as oil pulling,
you can aim for better hormonal balance as well. This, in turn, keeps your
skin clear and improves hair quality. Oil pulling is excellent when it comes
to headaches and migraines because these are caused by toxicity in the
mouth and/or body, or constipation.
Some people use olive oil or sesame oil, but I prefer coconut oil because
it has less omega-6, which can cause inflammation. It tastes better too.
However, in case you have sesame oil or olive oil, it is not detrimental to
use them.
So try this ritual every morning, especially if you’re taking any
medication, such as antibiotics, or are on treatment, such as chemo and
radiation. Remember to do it on an empty stomach. Afterwards, you can
drink warm water with lemon and then brush your teeth, preferably with a
toothpaste that doesn’t contain fluoride.
You may be thinking ‘how will oil pulling help me lose weight’?
Anything that helps you reduce toxins will contribute to weight loss. Here
are some testimonials:
Husain Anas: Coconut oil pulling has brought my weekly sore throats to
ZERO.
Summi Kaur: It’s one of the best lifestyle changes I have made, it’s been
two years and, besides the teeth, my overall health has improved.
Leena Sethi: I tried it with my son, and lo! He has benefited a lot. He
used to get canker sores in every stressful situation, but no longer. I just
used coconut oil on sores and oil pulling a few times two months ago. No
reoccurrence after that.
Jyoti Surve: Oil pulling, yes! I do it almost every alternate days for 10
minutes. Because of the toxic medicines I take, the teeth and the breath are
the first ones to get affected. Hence I take great care. This age-old method
of swishing it around the teeth and then spitting it out had made my teeth
looking good and strong, with no gum bleeds.
Jyottika Sharma: It’s helped me tremendously. Tooth sensitivity has
reduced quite a lot, and my mouth feels cleaner all day long. I tried it with
both cold-pressed coconut oil and sesame oil, but I feel it works best with
coconut oil.
 #18 CLIMB STAIRS to burn that fat

I often notice that people can run a 5-km race, but running up a couple of
flights of stairs tires them out. They can squat heavy and lunge with
weights, yet walking up a couple of flights seems like a whole other
workout to them.
Climbing stairs is one of the best exercises when it comes to pure fat-
burning, strengthening the lower body, toning the butt and calves, losing
love handles and belly, and building great abs. Along with these are added
benefits for your lungs and cardiovascular system. Here are some of the
reasons I think you should make climbing stairs part of your lifestyle:

It is free and just about all of us can get access to a flight of stairs.
It leverages gravity, so the heavier you are, the harder you’re forced to
work and the more calories you’ll burn.
It is a relatively intense exercise that quickly increases the heart rate
and in doing so greatly improves your cardiovascular fitness.
It helps strengthen and shape the most common problem areas, such as
calves, thighs, buttocks and tummy, as it engages every major muscle
in your lower body.
It is a very efficient way of burning calories and is great for those of us
with limited time to exercise.
It can easily be combined with other exercises, such as walking,
skipping and weight-training, to maximize results.
Stair-climbing workouts are easy to build progression into.
It can be done by almost anyone, regardless of the fitness level.
Because it is weight-bearing, it helps build bone strength.
It is low-impact and safe for the knees (provided the correct technique
is used and a pre-existing condition doesn’t exist).
 Stair-climbing engages your body’s largest muscle groups to
repeatedly lift your body weight up, step after step. Thus using your
muscles to carry your own weight up the stairs is better than running.
Climbing stairs is a great way to amp up your core muscle strength.

I believe exercise should be about quality rather than quantity. Too many
people mentally put aside an hour for working out, and if they can’t find
that 1 hour, they just don’t work out.
You should aim for power workouts of 25–30 minutes, wherein you max
out the reps, burn those muscles and really get your heart rate up. For 35 to
40 minutes, you should include a substantial warm-up and the extremely
important cool-down.
You can burn more calories walking/running up steps in 30 minutes than
in an hour-long run or walk. Plus, it challenges your body. Start off with a
couple of flights. Walk and run slowly. As you get better, increase your
speed, and then slowly build up to taking 2 steps at a time. However, make
sure you never run down the stairs. Be confident while running up. Take a
break when needed. Whenever you have the choice of an elevator or the
stairs, choose the stairs.
Start doing this regularly and, soon, you will be running up flights of
stairs, feeling fitter, younger, stronger and leaner.
 #19 IF YOU DRINK COFFEE, ADD COCONUT
OIL TO YOUR COFFEE TO MAKE IT A
NATURAL FAT-BURNER

I love my morning coffee like millions of you out there. I also love raw-
pressed virgin coconut oil for its amazing health benefits.
When you add a teaspoon of virgin coconut oil to your coffee, you
convert this simple beverage into a fat-burning elixir. Coconut oil contains
medium-chain fatty acids (MCFAs) that boost the body’s metabolism and
stimulate effective fat burn. Caffeine mixed with these MCFAs will
stimulate your metabolism and fat burn. Also, replace the white sugar with
brown or coconut sugar.
I find that it makes for an excellent pre-workout drink. It will give you all
the energy you need to work out to maximum capacity.
Remember, though, that coffee is a diuretic, so for every mug you have,
drink 2 mugs of water.
 #20 WAKE UP EARLY EVERY MORNING

This lifestyle change requires you to build discipline, which can be tough,
but is absolutely worth it. In a world where people struggle to finish
everything and more in a day, usually exercise, sleep, mealtimes and me
time is compromised or sacrificed. Most of my clients have lost weight by
changing the way they start their day.
When you wake up early in the morning without compromising on your
sleep, those 2–3 hours you get before the world wakes up is magical. No
ringing phones, no one talking to you, no distractions, unless you
straightaway log on to social media (you’re better off being in bed then).
You can get so much work done or invest that time in you. You will have
time to practise oil pulling, do yoga, pranayama, meditate, send emails,
study, read, or whatever else you like. This is my favourite part of the day.
You can use this time to plan your day in totality, sit back, relax and
visualize. Try adding this habit to your lifestyle. You will fall in love with it
and automatically go to bed earlier.
Strive for 7–8 hours of deep sleep, and go to bed each night at a time that
allows you to wake up before sunrise, at a time when you can be alone, in
silence, with yourself.
 #21 THE MOST POWERFUL FAST EVER

In September 2016, I had the opportunity to spend some time with some of
the finest biophysicians and scientists across Cuba and the United States.
Biophysicians study nutrition, health and immunity, and correlate that with
energy in the human body. Everything in the human body revolves around
energy. These scientists told me that an average human being uses 75 per
cent energy for digestion every day. This means you’re left with only 25 per
cent on average to get through your daily functions, exercise and
movement, and manage your stress, thoughts and emotions. The body was
never designed to use 75 per cent of its energy to digest food. But it’s
become this way because of the rise in consumption of processed food,
sugar, salt and alcohol, excessive smoking and exposure to environmental
toxins. The remaining 25 per cent energy is not enough for your body to
detoxify, for you to build immunity and for your cells to grow and repair.
What exactly is disease? What is cancer, diabetes, a stroke, high blood
pressure? These are all different terms for something as simple as
imbalance in the vital forces of your body. For example, an imbalance in
energy in your pancreas makes your cells unable to produce insulin, leading
to diabetes. Insufficient energy in your cells lowers immunity and can cause
cancer. Imbalance in energy makes your cells weak, and leads to hair fall
and deterioration of skin.
The key is to restore this energy, which is often achieved by detoxifying
your body. You can go to different naturopath camps, spend time and
money at detox facilities around the world, but all the effects of that detox
last only till you are there. You need to add something sustainable to your
lifestyle, as you can’t run off to camps all the time and come back to the
toxins in your food and in the air. When you have the wrong energy in your
body, you allow bad genetic expression to manifest. In my opinion, the best
way to detoxify is water fasting. A lot of people fast for religious reasons
and stick to just fruit, milk or one or two items throughout the day. But if
you want to use fasting as a way to rejuvenate your immunity, build
immunity and cure diseases, this inexpensive fast is for you. It’s difficult at
first, but soon you’ll find it a breeze. What I mean by water fasting is for at
least 24 hours, you consume only water and no food, tea, coffee or even
lemon water; just plain hygienic drinking water. When you start fasting for
24 hours, you allow your digestive system to finally shut down, so all that
energy can actually be distributed to all your vital organs and their cells to
repair, clean, detoxify and heal. I know 24 hours sounds like a long time,
but there is a simple and easy way of doing it.
When you detoxify through a water fast, you feel energized. A cleansed
body craves natural, wholesome and healthy food but one full of toxins
craves sugar, salt and junk. The beauty of a water fast is that everything
from cholesterol and high sugar levels to high blood pressure and excess fat
start to go away once you detoxify yourself regularly.
Now let’s see how you can do a water fast in a safe, simple and easy way.
For example, if you are going to do a water detox tomorrow, you will eat
dinner today at 7 p.m. and break your fast at 7 p.m. tomorrow, consuming
just water for those 24 hours. After you finish your dinner, you won’t feel
hungry till you sleep. By the time you wake up the next morning, at, say, 7
a.m., half your fast would already have been done. You may have a few
hunger pangs after a while because you’re used to eating breakfast, but
these will pass. Distract yourself, meditate, go for a very light walk, do
yoga or keep yourself busy with work, reading, etc. The moment you
remind yourself you’re fasting, it becomes more difficult. Make sure you
don’t have tasty food around you, or the smell will make it difficult. As you
reach lunchtime, you’ll start feeling a little weak, but it’s mainly in your
head. A few hours later, you may start feeling a slight high or have a
headache. It is more difficult to do a water fast if there are a lot of toxins in
your body. In such cases, there will be headaches and slight discomfort, but
that is a sign that all the toxins are being expelled from your system. The
more cleansed your system, the easier it is to do a water fast. If 24 hours is
too difficult for you, start with 10 hours and then move on to 16 hours. But
believe me, the easiest way to do it is for 24 hours.
Some of my patients who finish their fast at 7 p.m. figure they only have
2–3 more hours before bedtime and end up breaking the fast the next day,
fasting for almost 32 hours. Break your fast with a bowl of fruits. After two
hours, have another bowl of fruits. After waiting long enough for the fruits
to digest, you’re ready to eat normal meals. Don’t eat spicy food at such a
time, but don’t worry, you won’t even crave it. You’ll feel lighter, cleansed
and have a sense of vitality and energy in every part of your body. You can
do this fast once a month to start off and build up to twice a month. Most of
the people I know eventually do it once a week. However, always seek your
doctor’s advice before fasting, particularly if you have a serious underlying
condition.
I have people select one day in the week—it could be any day. For
example, if I want to enjoy my weekend, I pick Monday to be my fast day.
This way I cleanse myself from the eating done over the weekend and
prepare my body for the week ahead. It’s great to do it together with a
group of friends so that all of you can motivate one another.
I feel this is essential because we have no control over the quality of our
food. Through this fast, weight loss, too, becomes far easier, not because
you’re restricting yourself and fasting from calories but because you’re
detoxifying yourself. Examples can be found in nature too. Animals
instinctively stop eating the moment they’re sick because they use all the
energy to heal themselves. Similarly, when you’re sick, you probably lose
your appetite.
I highly recommend fasting at least once a month. Once you do it, you’ll
want to take it up from 24 to 32 hours. Always check with your doctor first
before fasting as it may interfere with your medical condition or
medication.
 #22 BUILD LEAN MUSCLE

The term ‘build muscle’ might make you think of muscular arms or quads
of the kind that professional bodybuilders have. But that’s not the only kind
of muscle you can put on. You need not be a fan of the gym and lifting
weights to have lean mass.
When you engage in exercises such as running on the treadmill or
elliptical or aerobic exercises of the kind that are taught at gyms, these are
good for you as you get your body moving. But it may not be the answer to
losing belly fat or excess fat. You may lose a little weight, but you also lose
muscle mass, which is what helps burn calories throughout the day. When
you have body tone and definition, a lot of energy, proteins and amino acids
are required to maintain that muscle. So when you have an exercise
programme that revolves around building or maintaining lean mass, you
create a better basal metabolic rate (BMR). This means even after your
workout, you will continue burning calories, even while you sleep.
This is why I stress on high interval training and Tabata, which are body-
weight exercises. Many people like to lift weights in the gym. This is great
as long as it is done with the right form, safely and with the right recovery
and nutrition. Or you could simply do squats, pull-ups, push-ups, planks,
jumping jacks and skipping, which are all body-weight exercises that help
you build lean mass.
If your goal is to be a bodybuilder, you will have to lift weight. But if you
just want to be lean, fit and have a low body-fat percentage, lifting your
body weight or a little extra weight should be enough.
If you’re exercising a lot but still find that you are flabby or have excess
fat, you’re doing something wrong. Just doing targeted exercises, such as ab
crunches and sit-ups, doesn’t work.
 Most Bollywood and Hollywood actors work out for 2–3 hours a day in a
gym, but they also take the required nutrition or supplements to help them
manage that spike of cortisol. So if you’re ready for that level of
commitment and care, by all means adapt that. However, I usually find that
most of my clients are busy people short on time who are just trying to be
fit and lose stubborn fat.
Push-ups are one of the best exercises. You can start off with push-ups on
your knees and then graduate to regular push-ups. Squats are excellent for
the body too, even for elderly people. You are never too old to do squats.
The more lean mass you have, the healthier you will be.
 #23 STOP THINKING AND START LIVING

As human beings, we are thinking all the time, from the time we wake up
to the time we sleep—sometimes even in our sleep. And that’s a good thing
because otherwise life wouldn’t be that significant. So if you’re thinking all
the time, you need to examine the quality of those thoughts.
I want you to focus on your breathing. Until the moment I asked you, you
were unaware of it because it’s an unconscious action. Similarly, you may
be thinking all the time but not paying attention to it.
Every emotion you feel is because of a thought you have. You can’t feel
unhappiness without an unhappy thought, anger without an angry thought,
and similarly jealousy, lust or laziness. Thus, it becomes extremely
important to monitor the countless thoughts going through your mind.
However, it is not possible to do so every second of the day, just like you
can’t constantly focus on your breathing.
It’s very easy to tell others to have positive thoughts, but it is not always
practical. When someone is going through depression or feeling sad or
worried, telling them to think positive is just scratching the surface. It’s not
a solution. Even the happiest people often have negative thoughts and
stress. It all comes down to how you handle negativity in your life. You
must first accept that negativity is real.
I would like to illustrate this point with one of my experiences. In
London, walking around Oxford Circus, I came across an African American
man speaking to the public. After his talk, I invited this man to have a
coffee with me. We got talking because I liked his views on life, sin,
positivity and negativity. During the conversation, he found out my wife
was pregnant. He told me, ‘Luke, for the first two years of your child’s life,
observe him or her very carefully. Your child will show anger, jealousy,
love, innocence, creativity, greed and laziness.’ I asked how it was possible
because I had always believed we pick up these things as we grow up. He
said they just become more pronounced as we grow older, and if we can
accept that, then we don’t try to suppress or punish that behaviour; we learn
to accept it. Only when we accept them can we tame them. Ever since my
daughter was born, I have seen each and every one of these negative
emotions, but I have never been worried because we’re all born with them.
Most likely, your pursuit is to be good all the time. So if you feel jealous,
you criticize yourself and tell yourself you are bad. None of these are
dangerous feelings, unless you let them out of control. But if you keep
suppressing them, they will come up again. This makes you put on a mask
and be something you aren’t. All that acting and overacting drains you of
energy every single day.
Coming back to negativity, when you know that a negative thought can
result in a negative feeling or emotion, why would you want to give that
thought more power and attention? So when you have a negative thought,
you have the power to stop dwelling on it and allowing it to grow and grow.
At that point, you could try focusing on a positive thought. So rather than
rid yourself of bad thoughts, give them less attention by focusing on
something positive in your life. Each and every one of us has something
positive in our lives, whether in the present or the past.
When in a negative situation, there are many things you can do. Call up
someone who makes you happy, speak to someone who motivates you or
think of something that makes you feel good about yourself
Every time you analyse your life, you are bound to find fault with it.
Immerse yourself in living, spending time with people and things you like
and start detaching yourself from analysing. Don’t focus on who said what
or the advice someone gave you on how you should be.
I don’t know a single person who, on reaching their ideal weight, said
that they were happy. There was always another goal, such as toning their
arms, butt or shoulders. Your thinking is what creates your life experiences.
Accept that you have a dark side and a good side. There’s no shame in
having a dark side unless it’s uncontrollable and you’re allowing it to harm
others or yourself. It’s up to you and your inner awareness to manage it
better.
Overthinking can drain you. If you are not mindful of at least a portion of
your thoughts, the mindless chatter and random thoughts will drain you of
energy—energy that could be used by the body for so many other actions,
including burning fat.
 #24 DRINK RAW POTATO JUICE OR APPLY IT
EXTERNALLY

Potato is rich in vitamin C, fibre, vitamin B, potassium, magnesium,

manganese, copper and iron and it also has some amount of protein. There’s
nothing wrong with cooked potatoes and we’ll come to that too. But in this
tip, I want to focus on raw potato juice.
It’s really simple to make. You should peel the skin because it has a lot of
pesticides and dirt, unless you have home-grown or organic potatoes. Cut
the potato and juice it with water in a juicer. If you find potatoes that have
green offshoots, make sure you remove those offshoots because they are
poisonous. You may not like the taste of the potato juice, in which case you
can mix it with carrot or beetroot juice. Some people add a bit of ginger or
honey to it. I like it plain because it tastes like the potato. I usually add it to
my morning vegetable juice and have gotten into the habit of having 200 ml
at night as well.
Raw potato juice reduces inflammation, which is great for all sorts of
pain. A lot of my clients in Canada and countries with extreme winters,
where arthritis and other pain flares up in the cold season, found remarkable
relief when they introduced raw potato juice into their diet.
A lot of us suffer from many issues due to poor circulation. Proper
circulation is important because it’s the process through which blood and
nutrients reach your cells. Potato juice helps improve blood circulation too.
Potato juice is highly alkaline. By now we’ve repeatedly talked about the
importance of maintaining an alkaline environment in the body. This is why
most of my cancer patients wake up to some amount of raw potato juice in
the mornings and also incorporate it into their diets at night or during the
day.
 Applying raw potato juice on your skin is also great, especially in case of
eczema. I have a lot of clients in Saudi Arabia and the UAE where eczema
gets enhanced because of the climate and no amount of oils and steroidal
creams work. But raw potato juice applied to the affected areas constantly
for 10–15 days provides relief. I also got feedback from parents that eczema
on their children’s skin was totally disappearing with the application of
potato juice. However, just using raw potato juice will not cure the
condition, as it requires detoxification and eating the right food.
Many people suffer from excess uric acid in the body and experience
pain in their toes as a result. Excess uric acid is not a good sign because it is
biofeedback from your body that your kidneys aren’t working properly.
Raw potato juice has the ability to break down and flush out uric acid from
your body. So if you suffer from this condition, drink one glass of this juice
in the morning and one at night.
Similarly, for those suffering from gastritis, whether it is acidity, an
indigestion disorder, flatulence and/or bloating, I recommend drinking 1–2
tablespoons of raw potato juice mixed with a little bit of water before
breakfast, lunch and dinner. Doing this for 1–2 weeks will provide relief.
As potatoes are rich in fibre, they help clean out excess cholesterol from
your system. They have the added benefit of not containing any cholesterol.
Raw potato juice is excellent for detoxifying the kidney, liver, gall bladder
and your body in general. This, in turn, helps you build immunity. I also
have clients who have been using raw potato juice on their hair and they
have all come back with feedback that it is a great conditioner. You should
apply raw potato juice directly to your hair and wash it off after 20 minutes.
It is also great for dandruff or eczema on the scalp.
If you have dark circles under your eyes, soak some cotton in raw potato
juice and apply it to the bottom of your eyes or where you know where you
usually have puffiness. This will only work if your dark circles are not
caused by lack of sleep.
However, you must speak to your doctor before having raw potato juice
if you have high levels of potassium in the blood, as potatoes are rich in this
mineral.
 #25 THE NATURAL SLEEPING TABLET:
BREATH

We have covered how important deep and sufficient sleep is to losing

weight, balancing hormones, banishing fatigue and detoxifying the body
and brain. For those who struggle to fall asleep despite going to bed on
time, this can be infuriating. Doctors tend to prescribe sleeping pills in such
cases. However, remember that sleeping pills never really heal you and, in
fact, slow down your metabolism even further.
If you need those pills, you should also be looking at ways to getting off
them, because every medicine you take has a side effect. One of the simple
ways to do this is to practise the following two breathing techniques. I’ve
been using these techniques with people all over the world. They are forms
of pranayama, which is an integral part of yoga. I know people who have
used these techniques week after week and gotten off their sleep medication
with their doctor’s approval.
When you constantly have thoughts running through your mind, those
thoughts don’t allow you to fall asleep easily at the end of the day or
interrupt your sleep cycle. The two techniques I’m going to outline
basically train the parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic
nervous system is also called the ‘rest and digest’ system, as it is
responsible for digestion and sleep. When you’re frantic or anxious, you
tend to take short breaths, thus taking in less oxygen. Our cells require this
life force to conduct all the chemical reactions and orchestrate hormonal
balance. It is also what stimulates the mind and the body to fall asleep.
Thus, enough oxygen intake could be the answer to most sleep problems.
Not all, but most of them.
 The first technique is very simple. It is the left-nostril breathing method.
Cover your right nostril with your thumb and breathe in through your left
nostril. Do this 10 to 12 times. Initially, just breathe naturally. Don’t force it
to be long or short. Close your eyes and focus on each inhalation and
exhalation from your left nostril. This is unlike another pranayama exercise,
wherein you keep moving your thumb from nostril to nostril. After each
breath, let your inhalation be slower and your exhalation a bit longer. But
don’t force it—that will automatically fall into a pattern. Do this a couple of
times every day before sleeping. This technique trains your parasympathetic
nervous system to calm down, and promotes good sleep. It’s not going to
happen the first time for many people. It’ll probably take a few days to a
couple of weeks for some of you, but don’t give up and keep trying it.
The second breathing follows the pattern of 6-4-10. This means you
should inhale through both nostrils for 6 seconds. (You may be able to do it
for 4 or 5 seconds, but you’ll eventually get to 6 or even 7 seconds.) After
this, hold your breath for 3–4 seconds. (You may be able to hold for 2–3
seconds at the beginning, but don’t cross 4 seconds.) The next step is to
exhale for about 10 seconds. So now you’re really going to need to control
your exhalation, but through a different method than usual. Don’t exhale
through your nostrils. Make a whoosh sound by pursing your lips and then
exhale slowly. Don’t force yourself even if you get to only 6 or 8 seconds.
Again, this trains your parasympathetic nervous system and gets your
breathing under control.
Try one of these at a time. Focus on left-nostril breathing or the 6-4-10
method, but it’s not suggested that you alternate between them. You want
your body to get used to one of them.
 #26 VITAMINS AND WEIGHT LOSS

Fats and proteins cannot give your cells the energy they need—that energy
comes only from carbohydrates. There are good carbs and bad carbs, just as
there is good protein and bad protein and good fat and bad fat. Now let’s
draw the connection between carbohydrates and vitamins. The B vitamins
are responsible for almost everything, ranging from the quality of your skin
to weight loss, diabetes, cardiovascular health, formation of new cells,
immunity and hair quality. All of these vitamins also play a role in the
metabolism of carbohydrates, protein and fat. When you have an imbalance
of carbohydrates and fat in your food due to restrictive diets, you don’t
allow certain vitamins to be synthesized in your body.
So don’t deprive yourself of good carbohydrates (fruits, whole grains like
millets, vegetables and lentils), which will help you synthesize vitamins
correctly in the body. In fact, when you eat the right amount of good
carbohydrates, you provide energy to burn fat. However, do stay away from
bad carbohydrates (processed and refined foods).
My advice is don’t blindly follow diets that tell you to reduce your
portion of carbohydrates. This is why the ketogenic diet may be great for a
little while to lose weight but isn’t good for your health in the long run. No
one tells you what happens after losing weight. But you need to scratch the
surface, and examine the quality of your hair, your energy levels, sex drive
and quality of skin, because it’s a diet that’s deficient in vitamins.
So aim for a balanced and smart diet that doesn’t leave out vitamins.
 #27 WHY YOU SHOULD EAT POTATOES

The truth is potatoes don’t make you fat. Poor lifestyle, overconsumption
or deep-fried potatoes do.
Cutting out potatoes may help you lose a little weight. However, my
approach is to allow most of my clients to eat potatoes every day, but in the
right way and in the right quantity.
For the longest time, people have made out potatoes to be really bad, but
the fact is they contain a lot of nutrients and vitamins that can help your
immunity and weight loss. People don’t get diabetes by eating potatoes.
They get sick first and then are not allowed to eat too many potatoes
because of the sugar levels.
Potatoes are a rich source of vitamin B6, which is essential for energy
metabolism. Vitamin B6 helps convert carbohydrates into glucose and also
break down protein into amino acids. So although potato is given a bad
name for being a carbohydrate and a starch, there’s nothing wrong with
either of those if they are digested and broken down the right way.
Potatoes are also rich in folates, which are used by cells for synthesis and
repair of DNA. So they are good to eat for cancer patients because they help
with DNA synthesis and repair, as all mutations of cancer cells are a result
of a mutation in your DNA. The right amount of folates in your body aids
this process.
Potatoes become unhealthy when you deep-fry them because they absorb
too much oil. Overeating them too is harmful, as is overeating any other
fruit or vegetable. Remember, the human body will use only what it needs
for its functions. Anything extra is likely to get stored as fat or an impurity.
Apart from the nutrients mentioned above, potatoes contain iron,
phosphorus, calcium, magnesium and zinc, all of which contribute to bone
health. India has a high number of cases of osteoporosis, patients of which
can benefit from eating this vegetable. Also, iron and zinc found in potatoes
lead to the production of collagen, which is essential for bone formation.
Potassium in your body can lead to vessel dilation, which can actually
reduce high blood pressure. As potatoes are loaded with potassium, they
have a direct impact on reducing high blood pressure. Similarly, this
vegetable can help with inflammation because of the choline content in it.
Importantly, choline also reduces the absorption of fat into cells.
 #28 DON’T COUNT CALORIES

Calorie-counting and restriction causes more issues than weight loss. Yes,
it’s easy to lose some weight when you cut down calories and exercise
more, but almost anyone using this method put on more weight later.
Instead of restricting calories, understand the consequence of the calories
you are consuming. Eating more nutrient-dense food is more effective for
weight loss and health than eating less food that has a negative impact on
your hormones, metabolism, immunity and cellular health. Cutting down on
good calories will deprive the body of energy and key vitamins and
minerals.
Of course, overeating anything, good or bad, is not a good thing for your
health, so you should definitely be mindful of that.
A diet plan that has calories counted for you is a plan that will set you up
for eventual failure (except, of course, if it’s a diet for medical reasons). A
calorie-counted diet teaches you nothing about lifestyle, how to listen to
your body when it’s hungry, how to be in tune with your cravings and
feelings, and how to determine if you’re hungry or just thirsty.
Do you really think a nutritionist understands enough of your body and
lifestyle to calculate exactly how much energy you need? The answer is no.
That diet plan then puts you in a rigid structure, never allowing you to
explore the mind–body connection, which is the most important when it
comes to health and weight loss.
Rather than counting calories, count the number of hours you are
spending on social media, in front of the TV, etc., which can be better
utilized in healthy activities.
 #29 USE THE POWER OF VISUALIZATION TO
LOSE WEIGHT

There is constant communication between your mind and your body.

Whatever and whenever your mind thinks, imagines and sees, it sends
signals to your body. The body responds by manifesting every one of those
thoughts. There’s a direct connection between your thoughts and feelings.
We did this exercise earlier in the book: if I asked you to feel angry, sad or
happy right now, it would be impossible unless you have an angry, sad or
happy thought.
Each and every one of you is made up of billions of cells, which
constantly vibrate with what you feel. So when you feel happy or sad, the
feeling is all over your body, in all of those billion cells vibrating with that
one emotion. So every thought you think has an impact on the way you feel.
There are more than 60,000 thoughts that go through your mind every
single day, so it is impossible to be aware of every single one, but you can
try to focus on the ones that make you feel bad.
When you close your eyes and visualize something happy, you change
the way you feel. When you master helping your mind and body
communicate better, you can apply the same concept to every aspect of your
life, from relationships to the way you want your finances to be.
Visualization is not just about thinking and reading out positive
affirmations—it’s about closing your eyes and visualizing something so
strongly that it seems real. For example, when a patient goes through
chemotherapy, before the session I tell them to close their eyes and imagine
that whatever is going into their body is cleaning all the cancer out, instead
of thinking about all the side effects of chemo and radiation. Almost every
one of these patients did not experience side effects, or felt much better.
 So now let’s take this concept and apply it to every aspect of your health.
If you’re popping a pill, don’t do so with disgust. Do it with the feeling that
it is going to heal you. That it’s going to go into your stomach, be absorbed
into your body and heal the condition that you’re taking the pill for.
About 70–80 per cent of weight-loss issues people have start in the mind,
because they spend a lot of time lamenting their weight, criticizing
themselves, complaining and feeling negative about their inability to reduce
the inches. Guess what? That’s the signal that your body is receiving, and
you will most likely continue to feel fat and lethargic if those are the
thoughts you have.
What you should do instead is start visualizing. It’s a shift of thought and
energy that anyone and everyone can achieve. Sit with your back straight
and close your eyes. First steady your breathing by focusing on just inhaling
and exhaling. Let every thought pass through your mind but eventually
bring your focus back to your breath. Imagine that a bright light is entering
from the top of your head, slowly passing through your brain, through your
chest and to all your organs, right up to your toes. This light, as it enters, is
energizing every organ, every cell of your body. While exhaling, imagine
that you are expelling whatever you want to from your body. It could be
toxins, disease, weight, stubborn fat, negative thoughts or unpleasant
feelings. Do this 3–4 times and then you will be ready to start visualizing.
Visualize yourself waking up every day after a good night’s sleep,
spending time in your kitchen getting a healthy breakfast together. Picture
yourself exercising and eating a healthy lunch, a healthy snack. Forget
about everything else. Forget about the scale, about what your friends are
doing to lose weight. Forget about what social media is telling you to do.
You just visualize what you need to do to lose weight and how you want to
look. Constantly picture how slim, curvy or toned you want to look. Then
think of an ideal day. Visualize yourself working out at your favourite time,
eating healthy meals where you are not rushed. Imagine a dinner that is
early, light, wholesome and tasty. Visualize that every sip of water is
hydrating. Imagine boosting your metabolic rate and losing weight.
 Every moment of the day, you are not going to be attached to that visual
in your mind. It is not going to take over all the other thoughts that you
have in your mind. Only focus on it for the 15–20 minutes every day and
then detach from it. You can do it any time of the day, wherever you are,
whether in a flight, a car, or before you go to sleep. I find it the most
spiritual time, because it’s meditative and doesn’t allow you to dwell on all
the bad things that you might have gone through in the day.
 #30 BROWN SUGAR OR WHITE SUGAR

For a long time, people have been paying more money for brown sugar
than white sugar in the belief that brown sugar is healthier, but this is sadly
not true. Before I get into the process of exactly how brown sugar is
produced, let me state that all sugar is bad for you when over-consumed,
whether brown, white, raw or golden.
Sugar is made from sugar cane, which is pressed to extract the sweet
juice. The crystals that form in this liquid are raw sugar. This raw sugar is
then processed and vacuum-dried to attain its light golden colour. This is
then sent to the refinery for further processing. After filtration of the liquid
to remove the plant thrash and dirt, the remainder is boiled, leaving behind
a brown sludge called molasses. Molasses contain a very small amount of
potassium, calcium, magnesium, B vitamins and trace minerals, such as
copper, manganese, iron and chromium. However, this is not sufficient to
give you your daily requirement of trace minerals. When raw sugar is
further processed, it’s washed and separated. Pure white sugar is 99.9 per
cent sucrose. White sugar mixed with molasses is brown sugar. Calorie-
wise, a teaspoon of brown sugar would be about 17 calories and a teaspoon
of white sugar would be about 16 calories. Nutritionally, brown sugar may
win by just a fraction. I know many people who think that they can have
more sugar if it is brown instead of white. What is better for you is pure
honey, unadulterated jaggery or pure maple syrup. Pure jaggery holds onto
its nutritional content. It loses all its fibre, iron, magnesium, B vitamins,
phosphorus and potassium when it is processed. However, jaggery is still a
form of sugar and should be used in moderation.
The powerful lifestyle change that I’ve seen people make with regard to
sugar is consuming it in moderation, whenever they feel like doing so,
regardless of whether they have switched to raw honey, jaggery, stevia or
coconut sugar.
You should consume sugar without guilt. Either enjoy it or don’t have it.
Enough has been written about the ill effects of sugar, so I’m not going to
repeat it, but do know, in most cases, that sugar is more dangerous than oil.
Sugar not just inhibits immunity, it is also what cancer cells thrive on.
When it comes to weight loss, you must know that sugar inhibits HGH,
the hormone that helps you build lean mass and lose fat. It impairs insulin
function, which leads to fat storage in the body and elevates cortisol levels,
the hormone that switches on your fat-storage function.
A lot of my patients ask about sulphurless sugar. Sulphur dioxide is used
to process sugar. It’s basically what gives molasses a lighter colour and a
longer shelf-life. So yes, sulphurless sugar is far healthier. On the other
hand, artificial sweeteners have aspartame, which has been linked to
Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, many kinds of cancers and other
health issues, especially for women, such as hormonal imbalance, fibroids
and cysts. So if I were given a choice between artificial sweetener and
white sugar, I would pick the latter, because the human body is not designed
to break down aspartame.1
Remember that you don’t have control over the amount of sugar in
processed food. So make sure that your overall consumption is balanced,
because sugar is always an empty calorie.
 #31 CLEAN YOUR LIVER

The liver has over 500 different functions. These include the conversion of
T3 to T4, cleansing, processing food and removing toxins from the air we
breathe. Apart from converting amino acids into proteins, the liver also
produces bile, which helps digest fat. The gall bladder stores the bile, and
every time you eat a meal that has fat, bile is used to break down that fat
and facilitate the absorption of omega-3, omega-6 and fat-soluble vitamins
such as A, D, E and K, which are vital for immunity, weight loss and overall
health. So just cleansing the liver can do wonders for your health.
Today all of us are exposed to many environmental toxins in our air and
food, which cause problems in the liver. If you are tired all the time, no
matter how much you sleep, how well you eat and how much you exercise,
it’s possible you have a sluggish liver. If it isn’t producing enough bile, your
ducts might be getting blocked by gallstones, which are nothing but
calcified deposits of cholesterol and bile salts. This would mean you don’t
digest fat correctly, become vitamin-deficient—which lowers immunity—
and most likely have high cholesterol. Gallstones could be the waste
material your liver produces cleaning out the toxins from bad food and
polluted air. When this happens, the bile finds a new pathway and uses the
pancreas. Bile irritates the pancreas, causing inflammation and hampering
insulin production.
This is why you should flush out your liver by doing a cleanse. Initially,
you could do it once every 2–3 weeks and then after that just once every 6
months. Keeping your liver in good shape is essential to enjoying a drink
from time to time. To do this cleanse, you have to keep yourself free from 6
p.m. till 11 a.m. the next day. That’s why I recommend you do it on a Friday
or a Saturday evening. You’re going to need three ingredients: Epsom salt
(also called magnesium sulphate, which you can buy in 20-g sachets from
your chemist), a 250-ml bottle of extra-virgin olive oil and some fresh
orange juice, if you need it.
When you wake up on Friday or Saturday, eat normally until lunch. After
lunch, don’t eat anything until 6 p.m. At this time, dissolve 20 g of
magnesium sulphate in 200 ml of water and have your first dose. Take a
second dose of 20 g in 200–250 ml of water at 8 p.m. At 10 p.m., consume
approximately 175 ml of extra-virgin olive oil. If you weigh more than 70
kg, you’re going to need a little extra. If you weigh between 55 and 70 kg,
175 ml is enough and if you’re lighter than 50 kg, a little less will also do.
(Refer to the chart on p. 171 for exact measurements.) You can mix the oil
with fresh orange or pineapple juice or even lemon water. I know it doesn’t
sound appetizing, but I’ve done it and it’s not that difficult at all. After you
have this concoction at 10 p.m., immediately lie down on your right side,
because that’s the side your liver is. You must keep your head propped up
on pillows so that it is inclined. Stay like that for 30 minutes. In case you
have gallstones, you’re going to feel these flow through your body. Don’t
worry, you won’t feel any pain at all. When you take Epsom salts, you may
have bowel movement, which is completely normal. It indicates that you’re
flushing out toxins.
The next step of the cleanse is to drink your third dose of Epsom salt
water the next morning, at 6 a.m. Two hours later, take your last dose of the
oil and juice mixture, but this time it’ll be less oil, about 75 ml. Then you
wait for 2 hours and take the final dose of Epsom salt and water. So there
are 6 doses in all. It sounds like a lot but doesn’t feel like that when you’re
doing the cleanse. One hour after the sixth dose, break your cleanse with
some fruits. After allowing enough time for the fruit to be digested, you can
go back to having normal food, but in moderation.
What’s going to happen throughout this process is that you are going to
dilate your bile ducts, and the pressure in your liver and your gall bladder is
going to force these gallstones out. On a normal day, it doesn’t happen
because you are constantly digesting and taking in toxins. You may even
see some of the gallstones, because a lot of them float. Some of them will
be red or green and differ in size. You will end up feeling light, energetic
and fantastic. You must keep a break of about 2–3 weeks, because you also
flush out a lot of vitamins and minerals in the process, which need
replenishing. After that, you need to keep a gap of 6 months between
cleanses.
You’ll find that heart problems, diabetes, sugar levels and weight
problems all tend to get better. Don’t do this cleanse on a busy weekend.
Try to stay home, as you may have to go to the washroom a lot. If you are
taking any serious medications, check with your doctors first. I have used
this with stage-3 and stage-4 cancer patients as well. But always make sure
to run it past your doctor, as he/she will have your detailed medical history.
This liver cleanse isn’t recommended for those who have undergone gall-
bladder removal. However, it can be done by those who do not have
gallstones and are just looking at cleansing their liver for better health.
Use only high-quality extra-virgin olive oil.

Cure Yourself

Schedule
2 p.m.
Keep your Epsom salt ready. Mix 80 g (20 g x 4 sachets = 80 g) of Epsom salt in 800
Start the
ml of water. This makes four servings of 200 ml each. Keep the jar in a refrigerator to
liver
cool the liquid (this is only for convenience and taste).
cleanse
Drink one glass of the mixture of Epsom salt. If you did not prepare this ahead of
6 p.m.
time, mix a single sachet (20 g) of Epsom salt in one glass of water. You may also
Dose 1
drink a few mouthfuls of water afterwards.
8 p.m. Repeat the procedure by drinking another glass of Epsom-salt mixture. Visit the
Dose 2 bathroom if needed.
9:45 p.m. Pour 175 ml extra-virgin olive oil into a glass. Prepare fresh orange juice or sweet
Prepare lime, or use 175 ml of packaged juice. Add this to the extra-virgin olive oil. Blend the
medicine contents in a mixer for 10 seconds. The medicine is now ready.
Drink the medicine (mixture of oil + juice). Lie down quickly on your right side for
30 minutes, with your head up high on a pillow. The liver is on the right side. This
10 p.m. way, more pressure is created on the bile ducts to push out stones. You may feel the
Dose 3 stones travelling along the bile ducts like marbles. There is no pain because Epsom
salt has dilated the bile duct valves. After 30 minutes, you may sleep on any side that
suits you.
6 a.m. Take the third dose of Epsom salt. If you have diarrhoea or nausea, take the dose after
Dose 4 going to the bathroom.
After Dose 4, wait for 2 hours and take a second dose of the extra-virgin olive oil and
8 a.m.
fruit-juice mixture (75 ml + 75 ml) and go back to bed the same way as the previous
Dose 5
night.

Cure Yourself

10 a.m.
Have the fourth and final dose of Epsom salt.
Dose 6
You may start eating. Start with fruit juices because the digestive system is weak;
11 a.m.
Epsom salt is known to cause diarrhoea. You can eat fruits or some light food after
Conclude
30 minutes. By dinnertime, you should have recovered from the effects of Epsom
the course
salt. You may eat regular food, but keep it light.

Note: You may postpone the entire schedule by a few hours if you go to bed
late, around midnight, instead of at 10 p.m. Even the interval between the
doses may be increased or decreased up to an hour to suit individual
requirements. You may reduce the doses of extra-virgin olive oil and Epsom
salt as follows:
 #32 DRINK THIS AMAZING CLEANSING
JUICE EVERY DAY

Carrots are one of the most nutritious vegetables available. I use carrot
juice for the treatment of almost every disease, from cancer to obesity,
because they are rich in vitamin A and beta-carotene, and also very simple
to turn into a juice. Although you can eat a carrot raw, it’s easier to digest as
a juice.
You should pick fresh carrots and peel them. If they’re organic, you can
use the peel as well. Juice the carrots with a little bit of freshly cracked
black or cayenne pepper and a whole tablespoon of coconut oil or a really
good extra-virgin olive oil. This is because the vitamins in carrots are fat-
soluble, which means they require fat to be digested and carried to all the
cells of the human body.
You can start off your day with this carrot juice at breakfast. The nutrition
from carrot juice can reach your liver and even repair and regenerate liver
enzymes, which is why it’s excellent for patients of liver cancer or liver
cirrhosis. Almost all of us have some level of toxicity in our livers today
because of pollution and contamination in food and water, and depleted
minerals and vitamins in ingredients. So keeping the liver healthy is of
prime importance, because the cleaner your liver, the more ability it has to
burn fat. Over and above that, carrot juice is rich in fibre and will remedy
even the most severe case of constipation.
This juice is also great for making your skin glow and hair shiny and
strong. You can even use it as a base and add beetroot, chia seeds or
flaxseeds to it. You can add organic raw honey to it as well, but a good
carrot is naturally sweet, so you should ideally not need anything to sweeten
it.
 So make this part of your lifestyle. Add it to your diet every single day. I
drink it in the morning and sometimes even at night. It is filling, refreshing
and one of the most nutritious drinks you could make for yourself.
 #33 DETOXIFY YOUR LUNGS

You may wonder what your lungs have to do with weight loss. The
answer is everything. The more oxygen you inhale, the more there is to
reach your cells and improve metabolic activity. Plus, with healthier lungs
you can completely exhale most of the CO2, which otherwise stays trapped
between cells, thus slowing you down. Remember, elimination of toxins is
everything when it comes to weight loss, good health and strong immunity.
The following four techniques help expel the toxins in your lungs.
Outlined below is a plan for your entire day:

1. Lung-detox potion

Soak 1 tablespoon methi seeds in half a cup of water the night before.
Drink 250 ml warm water with lemon and a dash of cayenne pepper in
the morning. Drink the fenugreek water and chew on the seeds.
About 10 minutes later, consume 2 cloves of crushed garlic with 1
tablespoon raw or manuka honey.

2. Steaming

After having the garlic, boil some water in a large bowl. Add 5–10 drops of
pure eucalyptus oil or 1 drop of peppermint oil. Cover your head with a
towel and inhale steam for 5 minutes—gentle, deep inhalations and slow
exhalations.
Have breakfast as usual, but add 300 ml fresh carrot juice with 1
teaspoon pure cold-pressed coconut oil or extra-virgin olive oil.

3. Magic lung breathing exercise

Keep a gap of 30 minutes between breakfast and this exercise:

a. Take a standing position. Keep your arms at your sides and feet slightly
apart. Relax.
b. Take a few deep breaths and exhale through the nose.

Now breathe in through your nose and exhale slowly through your mouth
until you cannot exhale any more. But do not stop here, because there is
still air remaining in your lungs. Force your diaphragm to exhale all the air
by wheezing. Exhale several times through the mouth by repeatedly making
the sound ho, ho, ho ho until you feel there is no more air in your lungs. At
this point you will feel you have pulled in your belly towards your spine.

c. Slowly inhale into your empty lungs. Fill your lungs with air completely,
and then hold your breath for 6 seconds, counting the time slowly.

Again exhale through your mouth until there is no air left in your lungs and
repeat the ho ho sound to expel the stale air from your lungs.
Repeat the whole procedure as many times as you like. Besides purifying
the lungs, this exercise strengthens the stomach muscles and makes your
skin look radiant as you have helped remove excess carbon dioxide from
the body.

4. Magic tea

Post the breathing exercise, prepare a litre of the following concoction and
have one cup warm.
1-inch-piece ginger /1 teaspoon dried ginger powder, cinnamon stick, ½
teaspoon basil/tulsi (fresh/dry), 1 teaspoon oregano (fresh/dry), 3
peppercorns, 2 crushed elaichi (optional), 1–2 cloves garlic (crushed), 1/4
teaspoon fennel seeds, 1 pinch ajwain, 1/4 teaspoon jeera
Boil the ingredients in 1 litre of water for 10 minutes and simmer, strain
and sip warm (you can add pure honey or jaggery to sweeten it).
For the rest of the day, follow this schedule:

About 30 minutes after lunch, have 250 ml of lemon water with a dash of
cayenne pepper.
2 hours later, have 300 ml fresh carrot juice with 1 teaspoon pure cold-
pressed coconut oil or extra-virgin olive oil, along with a snack.
30 minutes later: Do the magic breathing exercise followed by a cup of
lung tea.
Go for a light walk or do yoga any time in the morning or evening.
About 30 minutes before dinner, have 250 ml lemon water with cayenne
pepper
Along with your regular meal, have 300 ml carrot juice at dinner
About 30 minutes after dinner, have one more cup of magic tea.
About 1 hour before bed, take steam with 5–10 drops of eucalyptus oil
for 5 minutes. Also apply a castor-oil pack or rub for 30 minutes. Use good
quality castor oil. Warm a cup of it. Soak a flannel in it and squeeze and
apply over the chest/lung area. Keep for 20–30 minutes. You can even use a
heat pad over it to loosen chest mucus. You can also just rub warm castor
oil deeply and gently into your chest area and lie down. Then put 2–3 drops
of the oil in your belly button/navel area, and rub some oil within a 1–2-
inch-long perimeter around the belly button. It will automatically soak in.
Before going to bed, do the magic lung exercise and meditate.
 #34 DETOXIFY YOUR KIDNEYS

Think of your kidneys as a filtering unit that expels excess salts and toxins
from your body. The cleaner you keep them, the healthier you will be.
The following recipe is for a kidney cleanse:

250 g parsley and 250 g coriander

or
500 g coriander
or
500 g parsley
or
200 g brown, dried, unroasted watermelon seeds

Take 2 vessels. In one vessel, add the ingredients and pour water on it (4
cups of water / 3 fingers’ width over the ingredients).
Bring to a boil, and simmer for 10 minutes.
Strain and pour into the other vessel.
Put the boiled ingredients back into the first vessel and follow the same
procedure over and over again until the ingredients are slightly discoloured
and you have 1 litre of the liquid.
Slowly pour the concoction from the second vessel into a jug or a glass
bottle, being careful to allow the sediment to settle at the bottom of the
vessel.
The infusion is now ready. Have 200 ml on an empty stomach and 200
ml every three hours thereafter till it is over.
You may need to urinate frequently. Your head may also feel heavy (due
to the flushing out of toxins)
You can repeat this every 2 weeks for about 8 weeks in all.
 #35 THE GOOD OLD PLANK

To tone up and lose weight, I recommend planking every day. Start off
with a minimum of 30 seconds and build up to 3–4 minutes, making sure
your form is perfect. This full-body exercise works multiple muscles and
can be done anywhere and everywhere. Make sure to incorporate this into
your lifestyle. When you get better at the regular plank, move to side
planks. This is fantastic for your metabolism too.
 #36 GO FROM SEDENTARY TO ACTIVE

Working out for one hour every day and then sitting for the rest of the
day makes you just 4 per cent more active than someone who doesn’t work
out. Sitting is the new smoking. Most of my clients lost weight by being a
little more active during their day. So many of them are businesspeople,
actors and actresses who have no time on many days to squeeze in a full
workout and yet lose or easily maintain their weight.

Some of the things you can do to be more active are:

1. Take the stairs.

2. Take all phone calls walking/standing.
3. Attend all meetings standing.
4. Get your own tea and coffee.
5. Every hour, get up and stretch, touch your toes or do a plank.
6. Use a wearable device that can track your total activity. I use my
GOQII to track my activity, because my line of work requires me to
sit, but I manage my total activity just fine and my GOQII reminds me
to stay on track when I’m slacking.
7. Do activities that don’t involve sitting.
8. While watching TV, plank or squat during commercial breaks.

Get creative and you’ll find several other opportunities.

 #37 THAT EVENING SNACK

Most people feel hungry and tired 3–4 hours after lunch, and if at that
time, you don’t eat the right snack, cravings set in and dinners become
massive in terms of portions. The snack that I found helped people lose
weight was a bowl of raw mixed sprouts with onion, tomato and lemon.
Make sure to sprout them 24 hours earlier. In the morning, it takes exactly 4
minutes to put the rest together.
In case you do not like sprouts, other snacking options are:

1. Fruits
2. Nuts and seeds
3. Home-made energy bars/granola
 #38 EAT DINNER EARLY

This is my favourite and one of the most powerful lifestyle changes for
weight loss. India eats dinner too late. The heaviest meal in India is usually
dinner, understandably so, because after a long day at work, the family likes
to sit together and eat their favourite food. But that comes with the
consequence of weight gain, acidity and indigestion.
A gap of at least 3 hours is required between dinner and bedtime. I
subscribe to the practice of eating your last meal before sunset, traditionally
followed by the Jain community. If you can’t eat early, at least eat light.
Your body needs more protein and fat at dinner than carbs, because that is
what it will use for its functions while you sleep. If you get hungry later,
drink vegetable juice or eat some yogurt or home-made popcorn (never
microwave popcorn—that’s really bad for you and your weight).
 #39 HAVE MORE SEX

What connection does this have with your weight?

Having more sex is also a great way to move from a sedentary to an
active lifestyle. Plus it keeps you happy (assuming it is safe and satisfying)
and works as a massive stress-buster. As certain sex hormones are produced
during the act, the cortisol level falls.
Sex is good for your metabolic activity and burns calories as well. It can
help you have a good night of deep sleep, which you know is extremely
important for fat burn and weight loss.
Disconnect from your gadgets at least one hour before bed. That will help
with the production of more melatonin. Don’t know what to do in that one
hour? Make love.
Keep it safe and respectful.
 #40 START BELIEVING IN INFINITE
INTELLIGENCE

Ever wondered how your immunity or brain works? Why some people
have deadly diseases that are unexplained and some don’t? Why miracles
happen? It’s called infinite intelligence. We all have it. Believe in it. Your
mind is your biggest obstacle when it comes to weight loss. Your mind and
subconscious is what helps you get that weight off, or keep it.
Negative thoughts and feelings about your body and yourself work
against you and impede your weight-loss goal.
The mind and human body have infinite intelligence. No one can fully
explain it, but if you can have faith and belief, and use that to change the
way you think and feel about your body and weight, magic begins to
happen.
I write out affirmations for many of my clients who struggle with the
mind-body connect, and I know it’s the one thing they definitely need to get
that weight off.
I am sharing two of them; feel free to frame your own. My inspiration
and belief comes from Dr Joseph Murphy, the author of The Power of Your
Subconscious Mind.
‘Infinite intelligence in my subconscious guides me to eat the right
food, and do the right exercises that will help me lose weight. I am
thankful for all the weight I am losing.’
‘Infinite intelligence in my subconscious reveals to me and guides
me how to live my life in a way that I lose weight and I am
thankful for that weight loss.’
Be comfortable, sit with your back straight, close your eyes, take a few
deep breaths and say your affirmation over and over again, before you sleep
or upon waking up.
I used this to sleep better. Although I would get 7–8 hours of sleep, it was
normal for me to wake up at least once at night to pee. The night I started an
affirmation for deep, undisturbed sleep, I repeated, ‘Infinite intelligence in
my subconscious guides me into a very deep sleep, and I wake up refreshed
and happy. I am thankful for deep sleep.’ That very night I slept for 8 hours
continuously. It was the best sleep I had ever had and got me hooked to the
power of affirmations. Use them for your health, weight loss and life. You
can’t go wrong with them as long as you practise them with faith and belief.
 #41 EAT FERMENTED FOOD FOR WEIGHT
LOSS AND GUT HEALTH. THAT INCLUDES
IDLI AND DOSA

I’m often asked by my clients if fermented food is good for the body, as a
lot of people complain about bloating, flatulence, indigestion and acidity
after eating them. I know people whose staple diet is comprised mainly of
fermented food, but they have moved away from it because of these myths.
The truth is fermented food such as dosa, idli and dhoklas are very healthy
for you. If you suffer from indigestion, acidity, bloating and flatulence, you
shouldn’t blame the food, rather your weak digestive system. In grains and
beans, phytic acid causes most of the bloating and indigestion. During the
fermentation process, phytic acid gets broken down and that’s why you’re
able to digest the food much easier without all the gas and acidity.
Breakdown of phytic acid is good because it blocks the absorption of
minerals from food. Fermentation also produces lactobacilli, which
facilitates synthesis of an array of vitamins, especially B vitamins,
including vitamin B12. Apart from that, it also increases production of folic
acid, riboflavin, niacin, thymidine and even vitamin K. As fermented food
is pre-digested by bacteria, it’s easier for you to digest. During
fermentation, enzymes and lactic acid that help with the breakdown and
absorption of protein and amino acids are produced. Fermented food also
helps develop healthy gut bacteria in your intestines. An incorrect ratio of
good and bad bacteria in the gut leads to indigestion, bloating, acidity,
flatulence, IBS, leaky gut syndrome and malnourishment, because most of
the minerals and vitamins from the food you eat don’t get absorbed.
So removing dosas and idlis from your diet isn’t going to make you
healthier. However, there is a healthy and unhealthy way of cooking a dosa.
Choosing the right kind and quantity of oil and salt is integral to proper
digestion. Dosas cooked in restaurants are often covered in butter and oil
that is reused many times. So avoid them. Similarly, if you’re eating 6–10
idlis at a time, that’s too much. The reason dosas and idlis are so healthy is
because they’re made of ground urad dal and rice. Rice and lentils together
form a complete protein as the combination has all 22 essential amino acids,
which help build lean mass. Adding a little fenugreek to the rice and lentils
while grinding them has a warming effect on your body, thus helping with
digestion.
 #42 CURE THAT CONSTIPATION

Constipation is one of the curses of modern civilization. It is impossible to

lose weight if you are chronically constipated. It is also a serious condition
as it can lead to diseases, cancer included. The more constipated you are,
the more acidic your body is. Most of my clients who were constipated
started losing weight after we fixed that issue. Not only did they drop some
weight, they also felt lighter, their skin and hair improved, and all
headaches and migraines seemed to disappear.
The human body has five eliminatory organs—skin, lungs, liver, kidneys
and colon. If any one of these eliminatory organs gets blocked, you are
likely to have an ailment.
Picture this: if you’re constipated, you hold on to toxic waste in your
system, which stays in your colon. It’s your first and last line of defence in
the human body to protect you from disease and to enable you to heal
better. When you are constipated and your colon holds on to toxic waste,
the faecal matter hardens. The very reason the waste had reached your
colon was because it was to be expelled from the human body. When you’re
constipated, it stays there and has a negative impact on your body.
Constipation plagues millions across the world and most people pop a
pill or take a laxative, but that’s only treating the symptom. The number one
cause of constipation is your diet. Refined food, fried food, processed food,
high-sugar and high-salt food lead to constipation. Insufficient walking and
exercise is just as detrimental, because if you do not exercise, the food takes
a longer time to digest and travel the length of your colon. By the time it
reaches your colon most of the water has already been absorbed and that
then becomes hard faecal matter that cannot pass through your bowels. The
third cause is inadequate sleep or relaxation. Stress, along with fear, worry,
anxiety, haste, tension, anger, resentment, jealousy and lack of proper rest
have a direct detrimental impact on your bowel movement. Drinking less
water too contributes to this problem as the bulk of your stool is fibre and
water. If you have less water, your body cannot form enough stool to pass
through the bowels. The fifth reason is consciously trying to control the
urge to pass stool. You should never try to hold it back and rather have
regular times when you go to the loo.
All laxatives are harmful to the body as they put stress on the kidneys
and liver. There may be cases when you have to use them, but make sure
you are not dependent on them, because over time, your bowels lose the
natural ability to pass stool. If you don’t use your muscles, they waste away.
If you’re constipated, you need to adopt a diet rich in fibre and roughage,
such as fruits, raw vegetables, lightly cooked vegetables, nuts, seeds, lentils
and legumes. You should definitely look to add raw food to every meal,
because raw vegetables and fruits don’t just give you fibre but also essential
enzymes. You could start off with fruits for breakfast, and cut carrots or
cucumbers at lunch. The live enzymes break down your food more
effectively, making sure it passes through the colon more easily. It is also a
good habit to have psyllium husk at night, as it’s nothing but fibre. It’s
commonly available as Isabgol; 2–3 teaspoons of this fibre mixed with
water or milk can add bulk and volume to your stool the next morning.
A good practice would also be to adopt a ritual common in Chinese and
Japanese culture, wherein you wake up in the morning and drink about 1
litre of water. This sorts out even the most severe form of constipation,
because it puts pressure on your colon and that puts pressure on your
bladder. It also helps make your body a little alkaline, especially in the
morning, when you wake up with an extremely acidic body.
Some other home remedies that facilitate bowel movement are having 2–
3 teaspoons of triphala (a mixture of herbs) powder with water at night.
Adding half a teaspoon of ajwain to half a cup of warm milk at night also
helps stimulate motions. Similarly, black raisins (soaked overnight) and
prunes are rich in fibre and will help stimulate your bowel movement.
 Over the last two years, most of the cancer patients I have treated in India
have had extremely low levels of vitamin D3 or chronic constipation at
some point in their lives. This goes to show that toxic waste kept in your
system longer than it needs to be can cause mutation in your cells. If you’re
used to tablets and medicines to treat constipation, start weaning off them
now unless you are going through procedures that require it. Make sure
there is more water and fibre in your diet and that you exercise, sleep and
relax enough. Last, but not least, never strain to pass stool, as that will lead
to piles and haemorrhoids.
 #43 ARE YOU A SMOKER?

Smoking leads to a number of diseases worldwide every year, and should,

of course, be given up. At the same time, in my line of work, I come across
people who are trying to quit but just can’t seem to. In case you are
struggling to quit, there are things you can do to mitigate the damage you’re
causing to yourself and others by smoking cigarettes. This tip is not
intended to be a reason for you to continue smoking. The final aim should
always be to give up smoking.
Ailments caused by smoking are due to free radicals created in the body
as a result of it. One way to minimize free radicals in the body is to have
antioxidants, which are found in fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. In case
you smoke 1 or 2 cigarettes a day, you can get this nutrition from food, but
if you smoke more than that, I recommend supplements like vitamin C, B
vitamins, zinc and selenium.
Red blood cells carry oxygen from your blood to all the cells in your
body by latching on to a molecule called haemoglobin. High haemoglobin
translates to high levels of oxygen. When you have too much carbon
dioxide and carbon monoxide from cigarettes and pollution latching on to
your red blood cells instead of oxygen, it can cause shortness of breath and
higher heart rates.
Cigarettes also contain tar (a dark gooey substance that is toxic and has
the function of carrying nicotine to your lungs), cadmium (a heavy metal
that causes toxicity) and iron, which leads to the creation of free radicals. At
the same time, smoking depletes certain vitamins and minerals in your
body. The smoke damages your arterial walls, which can cause heart issues.
Vitamin E helps repair those scars. Make sure to take in enough through a
good-quality emulsified supplement or through food such as pumpkin
seeds, almonds and walnuts—depending on how much you smoke.
Cigarette smoke depletes collagen and vitamin B5, which prevents ageing
of skin, heart issues and also dilates blood vessels. Vitamin B6 converts
protein and carbohydrates into energy, so replenishing it is extremely
important. I would like to mention vitamin B12 as well here. You may not
feel the consequences of a B12 deficiency right away but sustained low
levels of it can even lead to diseases such as arthritis, Parkinson’s disease
and dementia. But remember, if you’re taking a B12 and vitamin C
supplement, keep at least two hours of gap between the two, as vitamin C
can destroy vitamin B12.
Smokers have lower vitamin C than most people. It is said that one
cigarette depletes almost 25 mg of vitamin C. Vitamin C boosts immunity
and is needed for good skin, hair and metabolic function in the body. Eating
citrus fruits can correct the imbalance of vitamin C in the body.
Selenium has the ability to latch on to heavy metals such as cadmium and
remove it from the body, so it is particularly good for smokers. Selenium is
naturally present in pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, watermelon seeds,
almonds and walnuts. But if you are a heavy smoker, I suggest taking a
high-quality plant-based supplement.
Magnesium, too, is a trace mineral in the body, its deficiency can cause
everything from heart problems to calf pain and muscle spasms. As you can
expect, smoking cigarettes reduces magnesium in the body. This can disrupt
the calcium–magnesium balance in your system. When there’s too much
calcium in the body, it tends to get deposited in your heart muscles, causing
improper contractions, which is why many smokers complain of an
irregular heartbeat. Magnesium is also required to break down fatty acids
from the food into healthy fat. Magnesium depletion results in deposits of
fatty acids between joints and arteries, causing pain and muscle spasms.
I hope that one day you will be able to kick your smoking habit and not
need to replenish these nutrients with supplements.
 #44 STAY AWAY FROM THIS DEADLY BUT
WELL-HIDDEN INGREDIENT

At this very moment, studies around obesity and weight loss are taking
place in laboratories across the world. Most of these studies test their
solutions on mice that are intentionally made fat by injecting them with one
ingredient that is found in almost 80 per cent of processed food around the
world: monosodium glutamate, or MSG. Most of us check for this in the
Chinese food we order but don’t realize it is an ingredient in most of our
processed food as well.
In the 1960s, the phrase ‘Chinese-restaurant syndrome’ was coined by the
New England Journal of Medicine to give a name to the symptoms many
people experienced within 20 minutes of eating Chinese food. People
reported tingling sensations, immense hunger, brain fog, chest pain and
pressure. Later, a link was found between MSG and these intense reactions
that people had.
Glutamate is an amino acid. The liver can efficiently break down amino
acids, but when one molecule of sodium is attached to it, it becomes very
unstable, which puts a lot of oxidative stress on the liver to break it down.
In most cases, your body is unable to flush this out. MSG creates
neurotoxicity in the body, which causes brain cells to die. While in the
blood stream, it fires up the nervous system and tricks the brain so that you
feel more hungry. That’s why you may have felt hungry within two hours of
Chinese food. This is because it has a direct impact on the pancreas, forcing
it to produce more insulin. In children, MSG can cause attention disorders.
If it can fire up the brain of an adult, imagine what it can do to the brain of a
child. The problem of limiting MSG consumption arises because it is
addictive. This is why when you open a packet of chips, it’s hard to stop at
one or two.
MSG wreaks havoc on your hormones and can create imbalance of the
kind you have in PCOD, ovarian issues, testosterone issues, or in cases of
low libido in men and women. Most packaged food and restaurants will tell
you the food contains no MSG, because it is disguised as hydrolysed
vegetable protein. This is because the laws allow companies to get away
with representing certain ingredients in a different way. Hydrolysed
vegetable protein sounds healthy because it contains the word ‘protein’ and
‘vegetable’. However, it’s nothing but MSG. Other terms under which MSG
is listed are vegetable gum and yeast extract. There are over 15 or 20 other
names which are used to disguise MSG.
The only way to reduce MSG consumption is to eat less processed food
and more home-cooked food. If you really want to eat Chinese food, choose
a restaurant that offers food without ajinomoto (which is, again, nothing but
MSG).
 #45 THE 500-ML WATER SHOT

You’ve heard every nutritionist, doctor and magazine telling you of the
importance of water in your body. But I would like to delve deeper into the
subject and examine some of the research being conducted across Australia
and the United States, called water-induced thermogenesis.
Research has shown that drinking 500 ml of water at a temperature
between 22 and 37 degrees has the ability to raise your metabolic rate by
almost 30–40 per cent. By drinking, I don’t mean gulping it all down in one
go but finishing it in about 2–3 minutes. The thermogenic effect is a result
of your body trying to warm up the 500 ml of water you drink. The increase
in metabolism depends on your body type and how big and heavy you are.
It happens within 10 minutes of drinking the water and continues for almost
1 hour after doing so. The number of calories burnt won’t be huge, but it
will improve the body’s fat-burning ability.
The key point is that the water should be at the right temperature. A lot of
people drink cold water thinking that this will burn more calories as the
body has to produce more energy to warm up cold water. But the cold water
shocks your organs and slows down digestion. Thus, it isn’t a good idea to
drink a lot of cold water throughout the day.
There is a direct connection between your brain and water. The
hypothalamus is the master gland of the body and the interface between
your hormones, endocrine system and nervous system. If there’s any drop in
water content, it affects your hypothalamus, which affects your hormonal
balance and nervous system. One of the main jobs of the hypothalamus is to
regulate appetite and cravings. Inadequate water in the body can create
unnecessary cravings and make you eat more.
 When your water contains a lot of caffeine, sugar, salt or preservatives,
such as in sugar-rich or aerated drinks, you’re drinking water but all of it
does not get absorbed. Plain water, which is rich in minerals, or with lemon
or other fruits infused in it, adds the mineral content that improves
absorption of the water.
Communication between cells is based on the fluids in your body. The
base of all fluids is water. Thus, even a 1 per cent drop in water in the body
impacts communication between billions of cells, which can affect
everything from hormone production to detoxification of your organs. Your
genes expect not just energy but also information to carry out innumerable
reactions in your body. This information is received from food and water in
the form of vitamins and minerals.
Most of us confuse thirst for hunger. You eat more thinking you’re
hungry and then your insulin levels increase to act on the raised blood-sugar
levels. So the next time you are hungry, think back to when you last drank
water.
I’ve done a little calculation wherein if you wake up and drink 1 litre of
water in the morning; 500 ml in the afternoon, about 30 minutes before
lunch; and 500 ml in the evening, about 30 minutes before dinner. That way
you’ll have consumed 2 litres. I would add 500 ml more before an evening
snack at about 4 p.m. or 5 p.m. And then consider about 500 ml that is
sipped throughout the day, which makes it a total of 3 litres every day. If
you exercise a lot, you should consume more water. This way you can
integrate this tip into your daily schedule. I have mentioned 30 minutes
before meals as I had earlier explained why you shouldn’t have water for at
least 30 minutes before eating. If you think you’ll forget, you can use apps
to remind yourself.
Keep water with you throughout the day. There should be a bottle with
you wherever you go so that you remember to stay hydrated. Just remember
not to mix it with your food—and don’t overdo it.
 #46 INVEST IN A ROUTINE

If you set a small routine for yourself before going to bed every night, your
mind and body will recognize these actions and begin to prepare for sleep
too. This sets you up to fall asleep quicker, which means you can get your
full eight hours of quality sleep.
The term is called ‘anchoring’, which means creating a stimulus-response
connection or signal. Once this is created, you automatically react, without
any conscious awareness, every time the stimulus occurs.
The famous scientist Ivan Pavlov created a stimulus-response reaction in
dogs by ringing a bell every time he fed them. Eventually, he rang the bell
without feeding them and when this happened, the dogs started to salivate.
The stimulus-response connection between the bell and the feeding had
been established at such a deep level that the response was unconscious and
immediate.
Humans respond the same way. Let’s look at negative anchoring, which
happens when a parent gives a child food whenever he or she is scared, hurt
or troubled, and tells them that food will make them feel better. After 2–3
times of doing this, such a pattern becomes ingrained and can be disastrous
to one’s health for the rest of their life. The person is taught to suppress
their feelings by eating food. A person programmed this way has not been
taught express themselves in a healthy way.
I noticed the impact of anchoring in my daughter Tyanna. Over the last
three years, I have travelled extensively between Mexico, London and New
York. Every time I got back home, I’d open the door, hug Tyanna and open
my bag to give her the gift I had got for her. After 2–3 times, this pattern set
in, and every time I rang the doorbell, the first question would be, ‘Daddy,
what present did you get for me?’ It then took more trips for me to change
the ingrained pattern.
I recommend that you use the power of anchoring in a positive way to
improve your life and health. Your routine could consist of the simplest
things, such as brushing your teeth, reading for half an hour and/or washing
your face.
 #47 AVOID LATE-NIGHT MEALS AND
EXERCISE

Late-night exercise may disrupt sleep, as it stimulates the body and raises
body temperature, and can even affect melatonin production. It’s also best
to avoid eating dinner or a large meal right before going to bed, as it takes
about 3 hours for the body to digest it, unless it’s a small snack. Keep a gap
of at least 2 hours between your main meal and sleep, and even exercise and
sleep.
 #48 MIX UP ALL THAT MOVEMENT AND
EXERCISE

Variation in exercise can be wonderfully beneficial for the body. Mix up

your workout routine. Go for a hike on the weekend. Take a dance class, go
rock climbing, practise yoga, do some Tabata or join a team sport so that
there is enough variation. By mixing things up, you stay interested in
activity, have more fun and burn more energy because your body has to
adapt to something new.
 #49 NOURISH YOUR SOUL

I encourage most of my clients to engage in this exercise daily.

What is it that you love doing for yourself? It could be enjoying a cup of
tea or coffee in the sun, reading a book outside amidst nature, lighting a
candle, taking a long bath, etc. Whatever you enjoy, make a list of all the
things you love doing and plan to do them more often. Once you have this
list, assign a star-rating to each of them. I got this inspiration from Oprah
Winfrey.

5 stars: highest rating

3 stars: medium rating
1 star: low rating

For example, this is what my list looks like:

Sitting in the early-morning sun: 5 stars
A cup of coffee: 5 stars alone, 3 stars with a friend
Tabata: 5 stars

Meditation/pranayama: 5 stars
Growing my own microgreens: 3 stars
Reading the newspaper: 1 star
Being stuck in traffic: 1 star
Eating outside food: 1 star
Spending time with family: 5 stars
Socializing for work: 3 stars

Now, count how many 5 stars you can fit into your day. It will automatically
make each day better and work as an anchor among all the chaos.
 #50 SPEND TIME IN NATURE AND GO FOR
LONG WALKS

Nature has a way of helping your mind and body relax at a cellular level.
The concrete jungles most of us live in are not natural habitats for human
beings. But the environment we live in shapes how we feel and adapt. So if
you live in a city, try to spend weekends amidst nature whenever you can.
Weight loss happens in a body that has a relaxed and peaceful mind, and in
nature you will feel this happen automatically. Most of my clients who have
successfully lost weight are now addicted to spending time in nature and
plan many of their holidays accordingly.
 #51 GROW A HERB AND VEGETABLE
GARDEN

Growing plants and vegetables is an extremely nurturing activity that

connects you with nature and the earth. You can even use this time to grow
your own microgreens and use them for garnishes or juices. If you live in a
city with no access to mud and gardens, make a microbe box. Take a box
and fill it with organic mud that’s always teeming with microbes, and just
play with this mud every day for a few minutes. It is such a liberating
experience. The smell of that mud connects you with nature as you run your
hands through it. Plus, it’s great for your gut, as those microbes help feed
the good bacteria in your gut, which is why I strongly encourage children
and grown-ups to play with earth as often as possible. And of course, the
healthier your gut is, the more effective your weight loss.
 #52 PRACTISE MINIMALIST LIVING

Practising minimalism has a very powerful effect. You may be wondering

how this helps you lose weight. When the focus shifts from having variety
to necessities, you tend to be more relaxed and mindful. You need to ask
yourself: How many pairs of pants or tops do you really need? How many
shoes and bags do you need? How much space and how many gadgets do
you need? How big does your home really have to be? Keep going till you
have covered all aspects.
If something is not truly adding value to your life, cut down on it. You
will also automatically begin to apply this to your food choices and
lifestyle. Look around your home, your workplace, in your cupboards,
drawers, etc. If you haven’t used something in the last 3–6 months and it
isn’t necessary, get rid of it. Don’t be attached to things you don’t need.
Declutter your surroundings and your mind. A decluttered mind is more
mindful and is able to be make more informed decisions.
 #53 IF YOU HAVE A LOT OF WEIGHT TO
LOSE, OVER-EXERCISING OR STRENUOUS
WORKOUTS WON’T HELP

If you are not healthy or fit and carrying too much weight, the best way to
start off is easy. Start with balanced nutrition and adequate movement,
along with quality sleep and looking after your stress level. Too much
exercise can cause muscle tissue breakdown and also impact the kidneys.
You need healthy kidneys every day of your life, and it’s not worth
compromising them. Over and above, if your kidneys are not functioning to
their optimum level, toxins will accumulate, which we know leads to fat
gain and prevents weight loss.
 #54 NEVER SKIP SHAVASANA AFTER
WORKOUTS

This is probably the most powerful yoga pose, also known as the corpse
pose. Rest and recovery is so important to making a workout effective.
Even the most intensive workout can be damaging and quite useless if you
don’t have enough rest and recovery. During a workout, you often tend to
push your limits to run that extra mile, hit that extra repetition/set and
stretch a little more. All of these activities raise the heartbeat and stress the
body, often releasing cortisol and causing lactic acid to accumulate in the
muscles.
End every workout, whether it is a simple walk, yoga, running, lifting
weights or CrossFit, with shavasana. This immediate rest, with its focus on
your breathing, helps the body quickly break down lactic acid and calm the
mind. It allows your energy to come back to equilibrium with nature, which
means it’s better for your circulation, hormones, muscles, tissues and joints,
and thus weight loss.
You can even practise shavasana after a hard day’s work, prior to
sleeping, and any time the body or mind is tired. Just 10–12 minutes of
unplugging yourself from all of life’s stress and drama will make you feel
energized again.
To practise shavasana, lie flat on your back. Keep your feet about 2 feet
apart. Relax your arms and let them rest on the sides, about 1 feet away
from the body, palms facing upwards. Close your eyes. Now comes the hard
part: Relax the whole body. Focus your attention on your natural breath as it
flows in and out of your nose. Continue doing this for 10–15 minutes or as
long as you need to feel relaxed.
 Although one may sleep at night, shavasana will double the benefits of
rest, repair and recovery. Almost all of my clients expressed amazement at
how this simple lifestyle change has worked for their body, mind and
weight.
 #55 DRINK ‘STRUCTURED WATER’

We know the importance of water, but what about the quality? Even
packaged bottle water has been found to contain traces of pesticides. City
water can contain heavy metals, antibiotics and fluorides beyond safe
levels. Unfortunately, this is the world we live in and your water could
slowly be poisoning you.
The best way to ‘structure’ your water is by adding lemon and Himalayan
pink salt. You can also have water infused with pieces of fruits and
vegetables. Avoid adding chlorine to your water, as overexposure can cause
immunity issues.
There is a lot of debate whether RO water is healthy, as it may be devoid
of vital minerals. If an RO is necessary to filter your water, you should
drink out of copper jugs and cups.
 #56 USE TRIPHALA POWDER

This can help you detoxify and facilitate weight loss. Triphala is an
amazing natural Ayurvedic powder that helps keep the large intestine, small
intestine and stomach healthy and clean by flushing out toxins. Triphala
also helps boost metabolism, improve immunity, lower cholesterol and
prevent microbial infections. It tones the tissues of the colon and thus helps
the body eliminate waste products, remove excess water and reduce
bloating. This is why it is known to help with constipation and
inflammation of the digestive tract. The best way to consume this is by
mixing 1 level teaspoon in a glass of warm water before bedtime.
 #57 EATING LESS FOOD THAN REQUIRED
AND OVERDOING EXERCISE WILL MAKE
YOU FAT

Too many people are still trying to follow the wrong diet and wrong
concept of losing weight. Eating less than the recommended amount for you
and exercising more than necessary is absolutely the worst way to lose
weight. You may lose a couple of kilos initially, but then you will put all
that weight back on again. I know because half my clients have
experimented with 10–15 diets in their lifetime, most of which include
eating less than necessary and over-exercising. Your body does not care
about your size zero, six-packs, flat stomach or how much weight you aim
to lose. Your body only cares about getting nutrients and energy from the
food you eat. Even if your body is not getting that one nutrient that the cells
need, it goes into famine mode or stress mode, in which you can’t lose
weight.
You can force your body to lose 2–5 kg initially with an intensive
workout, strict dieting and restricted calories, but more often than not, you
will put it all back again, look older, lose hair, see your skin change and
have people say you look weak. You need to move your focus from calories
to nutrients, because every time you restrict your diet, you may deprive
your body of certain vitamins and minerals that it needs to further break
down carbohydrates, fats and protein.
Most people eat more than their bodies require because they eat too fast
or mindlessly, with distractions such as watching TV or attending meetings.
We never really focus on how much our body really needs. If you start
eating only how much your body requires, you will lose weight. You don’t
have to under-eat to do so.
 When you increase the amount you exercise, you need to increase your
nutrient intake, otherwise your body puts on more weight. This comes back
as ugly weight in your abdominal area, as love handles, on the back of your
thighs and under your arms.
To lose weight, eat more of the right food and exercise more. This is the
way athletes train too. On the days you cannot exercise or exercise less, you
eat less. These two concepts are enough to help you balance your diet and
exercise.
 #58 INTERMITTENT FASTING (IF)

Fasting has been one of the most powerful and natural tools when it comes
to healing or preventing a disease, and was a way of life for our ancestors.
Intermittent fasting respects two important cycles in the human body—the
elimination phase and the building phase. The elimination phase is when the
body detoxifies, cleanses, repairs, rejuvenates and rebuilds. Eating in the
elimination phase will not help you with your weight, immunity or any
aspect of your health. However, if you eat well in the building phase, the
cells are receptive to nutrition and act as sponges for vitamins, energy and
trace minerals. The elimination phase, on the other hand, is the phase when
you are detoxifying.
At the time when there was no electricity, people used to eat early
because after sunset would hardly be any light. So, automatically, the next
meal after dinner was after sunrise. This way, the body would automatically
respect the elimination phase. However, now, due to changing lifestyles,
fasting often has to be introduced to achieve the same benefits.
In intermittent fasting, one embraces fasting and then feeding, similar to
the traditional practice of fasting during the month of Ramadan.1 Fasting
comes naturally to humans, for example, a 7–8-hour period of sleep. The
body automatically puts us in a state that allows detoxification. The dirt in
the corners of our eyes, the smell in our mouth and the warm and acidic
nature of the first urine are all signs of the body successfully detoxifying
itself at night.
The principle of intermittent fasting is simple. Our digestive system uses
almost 80 per cent of the body’s energy, leaving the remaining 20 per cent
for other bodily functions. You might have noticed that your appetite
reduces when you are ill. That’s the body’s natural defence mechanism,
protecting and healing you. By not eating, the digestive system slows and
eventually shuts down, thereby directing the saved energy towards healing,
detoxification, repair and immunity-building.
Many people fast by drinking juices, eating just fruits, nuts, sabudana and
puris on that day. However, that is not a fast. Fasting means not eating any
food for that period. All you can consume is water—and not even tea,
coffee or lemon water—because the whole idea is to give the digestive
system complete rest. Also, the intention of fasting is very important. Do
not fast to lose weight. Aim for good health instead.
Intermittent fasting is shown to reverse hair loss, skin issues, cravings,
breaking the weight-loss plateau, ageing, hormonal imbalance, low
immunity, detoxification and help with building spiritual health and feeling
more energetic. This doesn’t mean you need to starve but eat exactly what
you want and when your body needs it.
In order to do intermittent fasting correctly and experience true
therapeutic benefits, a fast of 12–16 hours for 3 days in a row, once or twice
a month, is recommended. A clean body may have to fast for less time,
while a toxic body may have to fast for a longer period. One may start off
with a 12-hour fast and gradually build up to 16 hours. With practice, a 16-
hour fast may become so easy that you may then be able to launch into a
24-hour water fast, which is absolutely fantastic for immunity and weight
loss. For example, if you eat dinner by 8 p.m. and then eat breakfast at 8
a.m. the next morning, you will have fasted for 12 hours. If you eat your
first meal at 12 p.m., you would have fasted for 16 hours.
It’s common to experience bouts of hunger pangs on the first day, but by
the third day you will start to experience the benefits and feel much better.
Before attempting intermittent fasting, it’s extremely important to seek
professional advice. Please check with your doctor in case you have an
underlying condition or if it is suitable for you.
 #59 DRY FASTING

‘Dry fasting’ means the intentional abstinence from all food and water
for a particular time frame, which could be for 12, 16, 24 or even up to 36
hours, depending on an individual’s comfort level. It is one of the most
superior forms of fasting and cleansing. It’s a level above intermittent
fasting in terms of benefits. In fact, 3 days of intermittent fasting is
considered to be the equivalent to one day of dry fasting.1 This means that
the healing and detoxification process is much quicker in dry fasting as
compared to intermittent fasting.
During dry fasting it’s normal to lose weight, but one shouldn’t use it as a
tool to drop weight. It should be used as a discipline that helps boost
immunity, heals diseases and infections and improves overall health. There
are innumerable health benefits of dry fasting, and while intermittent fasting
may bring about the same results, these are even more pronounced in the
case of the former.

Some benefits of dry fasting are:

1. Detoxification

During dry fasting, your body switches its detoxification pathways and
becomes a waste-burning machine. The cells behave as powerful
incinerators and toxins are burned inside each and every cell. This way your
body gets rid of the sickest cells and cellular waste.

2. Increased immunity

The logic behind the healing power of dry fasting is that since our bodies do
not receive food or water, the load of the digestive system reduces
dramatically. Hence, most of the energy is directed towards regeneration,
including of the immune system. Therefore, the immune system can operate
with greater efficiency because of all the saved energy.2

3. Reducing inflammation and infections

Pathological bacteria and microbes love wet surfaces. Thus, inflammation

often occurs in the presence of water. Where there is no water, there is no
inflammation.3 A wet environment is ideal for the proliferation of
pathological bacteria, viruses and worms. Since dry fasting means going
without food and water, a marked improvement is seen in inflammatory
markers such as CRP (c-reactive protein) and ESR (erythrocyte
sedimentation rates).4 Inflammatory gut issues also improve as dry fasting
cleanses the GI (gastrointestinal) tract and renews its mucosal lining.
An extended and recurrent episode of dry fasting has also been known to
help people battle yeast and bacterial infections such as those caused by
Candida albicans, vaginal infections, UTIs and parasitic infections. It’s a
fantastic and natural way to cure common cold, if practised immediately
after the first symptoms emerge.

4. Healing cancer, tumours and cysts

During dry fasting, the body can go into a state called autophagy, which is
when the body tries to sacrifice its sickest cells. Only the healthiest of all
cells survive extreme conditions, while cysts, tumours, fibroids, ganglions
and other unhealthy cells undergo a process called autolysis. This is of great
value in healing certain cancers and benign tumours.
Fasting also reduces the enzyme PKA (protein kinase), which increases
tumour and cancer growth.5

5. Maintaining hormonal balance

Fasting resets hormonal balance and thus we see a reversal in the cases of
thyroid, diabetes and PCOS. Study after study has also proven that fasting
is a great stimulus for the secretion of the human growth hormone (HGH).
HGH is crucial in the maintenance of lean mass—both muscle and bone.
This is why one doesn’t notice the loss of muscle mass during dry fasting.
In fact, the body appears leaner and much more toned during this process.

6. Stimulating the vagus nerve

Our tenth cranial nerve is called the vagus nerve. It is one of the longest
parasympathetic (state of ‘rest and digest’) nerves that travels from the
brainstem and splits into numerous branches linking the oesophagus, voice
box, ears, lungs, heart, kidneys and abdomen, thereby connecting the mind
with the body as a whole. It performs command-and-control involuntary
functions in the human body and facilitates a number of functions related to
digestion, insulin, stress, inflammation, fibromyalgia, depression, anxiety,
addiction to stimulants, weight gain, tinnitus, autism, cancer, multiple
sclerosis and many other conditions.
Dry fasting helps stimulate this nerve, which indirectly affects of lot of
functions, including digestion. The vagus nerve manages the digestive tract,
contracting the stomach and intestinal muscles to help digest food and send
information about what is being digested and what the nutrients get out of
it. It helps in regulating the secretion of stomach acids, which are important
for killing toxins, pathogens, germs and bacteria that we may ingest through
food and water. The right amount of stomach acid also helps in the
digestion of proteins, and in preventing issues like bloating, indigestion and
flatulence. And the right kind of digestion and absorption of nutrients has
everything to do with weight loss.
Dry fasting itself is not a cure, but it provides the right conditions for the
body to activate all of its own healing powers. It does have some
limitations. In cases of cancer, mental illnesses, kidney and liver diseases,
certain cases of diabetes and serious cardiovascular conditions, it is advised
to dry-fast only under strict medical supervision. It should not be practised
if the body is weak or by women who are nursing or pregnant.
7. Spiritual benefits

Dry fasting affects us spiritually too. When we fast, it’s easier for us to
connect our physical bodies to our spiritual self. Without the toxins we put
in our bodies, we not only give our bodies a break from the digestive
process but also allow our spirits to be detoxed. After all, what feeds us
feeds our soul too. It’s common for fasters to experience a deeper spiritual
connection and prolonged meditation practice without getting restless.
Since our thoughts during a fast aren’t so consumed by what we are going
to eat next, we have more energy to devote to spirituality.
Dry fasting also cleanses our chakras, unblocks energy channels and
heightens awareness and brain activity. It’s a great way to flush out all
negative emotions and thoughts.

How one should begin dry fasting?

If you are new to fasting, do not immediately attempt dry fasting. Do your
own research and practise intermittent fasting for a couple of days before
starting a dry fast. This will help the body adapt to the change better.
Preparation is key when it comes to dry fasting. To begin with, make sure
that your day’s schedule supports your fast. Do not keep dry fasting for a
busy day in the sun. If it’s your first time, do it on a day of rest or of low-
key activities.
Start your dry fasting after dinner. For example, if you eat dinner at 7
p.m., drink a glass of water between 7:45 p.m. and 8 p.m. and dry-fast till
whenever it is a good fit for you. This includes the time that you are asleep.

How long should you dry-fast for the first time?

Be realistic and try not to follow someone else’s fasting schedule. If you are
a beginner, you may want to fast for 10 hours; if you are on the intermediate
level, then maybe 16–18 hours; and if you are an expert, then about 20
hours. However, there is no hard-and-fast rule to stick to. If you aim for 10
hours but feel you can go on for longer, then listen to your body. Generally,
a toxic body may need longer hours of fasting, whereas a cleaner body may
only need a few hours of fasting.

Precautions to take:

The day before you dry-fast, wean off caffeine and sugar products. Too
much caffeine can dehydrate you and too much sugar can only lead to
more sugar cravings, which can make dry fasting difficult.
Be aware that you may experience acidity, headaches and irritability.
Ensure that your mind is calm and the surroundings are peaceful
during fasting.
Be positive about your fast. You can also recite some positive
affirmations.

For example: Hour by hour my body is cleaning and purifying itself and
Fasting makes me happier and healthier.

Break your fast the right way:

No matter what the length of the fast, the best way to break it is with
nutritious and easy-to-digest foods. Be patient, calm and grateful.
Rushing to eat only does more harm than good, because throughout the
fast, your digestive system slows and digestive fires weaken. It needs
to be woken up slowly in the right way to derive the best from the
entire effort.
The first step is to thank your body for supporting you throughout the
fast.
Have 100–150 ml of water, sip by sip. Swirl it in the mouth for a few
seconds and swallow (do not gulp).
Eat 2–3 dates and chew every bite well. If you don’t have dates,
bananas, figs or dried apricots work well too.
Many people do not feel hungry while breaking the fast. That’s fine.
Respect your body’s signals as it is still in detoxification mode.
 After an hour or so, eat fresh, cut fruits with nuts and seeds,
buttermilk, lemon water, coconut water, kokum juice, jeera water or
barley water. Avoid fruit juice and opt for whole fruits instead.
This can be followed by simple and small home-cooked meals such as
khichdi, soup or a traditional balanced diet after an hour or so. Avoid
overeating in any case.
When breaking a fast, begin with small, frequent meals, progressing
gradually towards larger meals, with more time in between them until
you reach a normal routine. Work up to 3 meals and 1–2 snacks.
Avoid any tea or coffee while breaking the fast. Instead, opt for lemon
water with jaggery/raw honey and a pinch of pink Himalayan salt.

How to counter thirst?

When you begin to dry-fast, it’s common to feel hungry or thirsty because
we are habituated that way. For most, things will usually get difficult at
breakfast time, because the need to eat/drink comes out of habit. Avert this
urge by either deep breathing or keeping yourself busy in tasks. Deep
breathing is a great way to counteract thirst and cravings.
Please note:

Make an informed decision with your doctor if you have a serious

medical issue or are on medication that needs to be taken at a
particular hour. For patients dealing with low blood pressure or low
sugar levels, it’s important to do it under the observation of a family
member or a caretaker.
Be careful not to fast too frequently; allow your body sufficient time to
rebuild nutritional reserves.
 #60 PRACTISE GRATITUDE AND
THANKFULNESS

This is probably one of the most powerful practices when it comes to any
goal you want to achieve in life. I encourage all my clients to practise
gratitude daily, and I don’t know a single person who has anything but
amazing things to say about how it helped them not just with weight loss
but with everything in their life.
All too often, our minds dwell on problems not resolved, opportunities
missed, relationships lost, promises not kept, poor health, faded dreams,
fear of an uncertain future, regret and longing.
While life does bring its share of challenges and disappointments, it also
brings us great joys: problems solved, opportunities seized, relationships
built, great health, promises kept, dreams fulfilled and hope that soothes
fear. It brings with it the opportunity of today and tomorrow; a clean slate to
keep on trying or to start all over again; an opportunity to move forward
even an inch each day, in spheres of our life such as health, wealth, career,
relationships and spirituality; an opportunity to be a little bit better than
what we were yesterday; and an opportunity to practise kindness and cut
down on worry.
Gratitude is thankful appreciation for what an individual receives,
whether tangible or intangible. With gratitude, people acknowledge the
goodness in their lives. In the process, people usually recognize that the
source of that goodness lies, at least partially, outside themselves. As a
result, gratitude also helps people connect to something larger than
themselves as individuals—whether to other people, nature or a higher
power.
 I have seen the power of gratitude transform the health of extremely sick
people.
I have seen cancer patients turn their lives around by changing the way
they think, by changing their attitudes towards life and all around.
I have seen people throw away their sleeping pills and anxiety meds
because they learnt these were not remedies, and that the real cure lay in
their minds, attitudes and outlook to life and themselves.
I have seen gratitude transform relationships and careers, inspiring
people who would never work out or eat well to start doing so.
In positive psychology research, gratitude is strongly and consistently
associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive
emotions, enjoy good experiences, improve their health, face and handle
adversity, and build strong and happy relationships.
People feel and express gratitude in many different ways. They can apply
it to the past (retrieving positive memories and being thankful for elements
of their childhood or past blessings), the present (not taking good fortune
for granted as it comes) and the future (maintaining a hopeful and
optimistic attitude). Regardless of the inherent or current level of someone’s
gratitude, it’s a quality that individuals can successfully cultivate further.
Gratitude can help you achieve the body you want, that perfect weight
and rejuvenate the health of your trillions of cells. Today, instead of
focusing on all of the above, focus on what you have with regard to your
health.
Be grateful and offer thanks for:

The use of your arms and legs.

Your eyesight, sense of smell, hearing, sense of touch.
The fact that you have the ability to work out.
The fact that you have access to good, clean food and water.
That you have the gift of a new day and a chance to make your health
better.
The fact that billions and billions of cells in your body are working to
keep you alive.
 That you have energy to get through the day.
The fact that things are easier for our generation in terms of food,
exercise, knowledge and access to variety.
The fact that even if you are sick, you are alive and by being grateful
for that, you will heal.

When you constantly complain or talk negatively about your health and
weight, all you do is make the situation worse by attracting more negativity,
and creating enormous stress in your cells and mind, which prevents you
from achieving your goal.
When you are grateful for your body, health and life, you will not
continuously abuse your body with alcohol, cigarettes, junk food, drugs and
medicines. You will do it all, but in moderation and out of respect for your
body. Anything other than that is being disrespectful and ungrateful for the
gift of your body and life, which will make it deteriorate.
If you think you are fat, you will be. Instead, focus on and offer gratitude
that you have the ability to get fit. Focus on picturing yourself at the weight
you want to be. Offer thanks after every workout you do, or every clean
meal you eat, as each of those things are a step forward to get you to your
ideal weight.
You can eat an ice cream with the attitude that it will make you fat. But
try eating it with gratitude, love and enjoy every bit of it, being thankful for
the taste, the people who made it and the ability to afford it, and you will
not put on weight. You will also be happier and healthier.
Each of us has the opportunity to be grateful for some part of our health
and the chance to offer thanks in advance. For example, if you want to get
slimmer, offer thanks in advance for losing weight. This shift in attitude will
make you feel super powerful, in control and happier.
Start practising gratitude right now. For example, offer thanks for your
eyes that you can read this book.
 #61 WHY YOU SHOULD SOAK NUTS AND
SEEDS

Nuts and seeds are powerhouses of micro-nutrients such as vitamins,

minerals, fibre and heart-healthy fat. One must consume these in limited
portions as they are energy-dense, i.e. smaller quantities provide lots of
energy and nourishment. With the array of nutrients present in them, it
makes it essential for us to incorporate them into our daily diet.
Along with the vital nutrients that nuts and oilseeds provide, they also
contain anti-nutrition compounds (phytates and tannins) and enzyme
inhibitors. These bad factors in nuts and seeds are essential for their
survival (until germination) and protect them from any damage caused by
environmental germs. However, these factors do no good to the human
body and hence must be deactivated before consumption.
Phytates have the ability to bind to minerals such as calcium, iron,
magnesium, etc. in our body and make them unavailable to us. This may
lead to various deficiencies. Enzyme inhibitors make nuts and seeds
difficult to digest, causing abdominal problems such as bloating and
discomfort. When you soak nuts and seeds, deactivation of anti-nutrition
compounds and neutralization of enzyme inhibitor occur. This thereby
improves the quality of proteins, making them easy to digest. Even the
nutritional quality of the vitamins increases, especially vitamin B-complex.
Soaking is one of the best methods to negate all the bad factors in nuts and
make all the good nutrients readily available to the body.
 #62 BE THE BEST VERSION OF YOURSELF

At the end of it all, who are you, and who do you want to be? I make all
my clients work on this aspect. You need to know who you really want to be
and what your true goal is to achieve anything.
To be the best version of yourself every day is what your goal and
benchmark should be when it comes to your health, body, mind, the way
you see life, success, happiness, love and peace. If you walked a little more,
ate a little better, slept a little more, did a little more for your mental and
emotional health than you did yesterday or the day before, that’s enough.
Long-term goals are great but the present is the most valuable. Are you the
best version of yourself today? When and if you answer that question, don’t
compare yourself with others around you. Compare only with your previous
self. Grow a little bit every day physically, mentally, emotionally and
intellectually.
If you lost a little weight, celebrate it, be happy, thankful and grateful,
and you will lose more and more. If you ran a little farther or did a few
more squats, you’re getting stronger. Celebrate that, and you will achieve
more. Be the best version of yourself and I promise you weight loss and
peace of mind will follow.
 Conclusion

These are the top lifestyle changes that thousands of my clients across the
globe have used to lose weight and improve their health.
At this point, there are over 19,000 people who follow me on Facebook,
along with other social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter, who
have used lifestyle to lose weight and reverse disease. Reach out to them,
they are all there on my page to motivate and inspire you to do the same.
Get onto my Facebook page, where I post regular videos about how to
inculcate lifestyle changes, heal and prevent disease.
That’s the beauty and power of lifestyle. Lifestyle is not just the magic
weight-loss pill, it’s the natural drug for preventing and healing almost
every disease—including cancer.
Having reached this far, you would have determined the few or many
lifestyle changes that you need to make or add to your life. Take them one
at a time. Do them until they become a habit. Take what applies to you.
Make a list of the top 5 lifestyle changes you need to make. Get a buddy
to track you. Get yourself a device to track your activities. You can do this
alone or as a family. Choose a lifestyle that works for everyone and work on
it as a team. If you are sick, select lifestyle changes that will help you heal
and prevent sickness and disease from worsening.
I truly appreciate all of you for reading this book and buying it, from the
bottom of my heart. It means a lot to me that you have taken out the time to
read my book. I truly hope it changes your weight and health in a
meaningful way.
Before I end, I will leave you with a little exercise that can help you
determine which lifestyle changes you need.
Questions to ask yourself and reflect on:
Food and Nutrition

1. How are your current eating habits affecting you every day, including
your mind and body?

2. What are three healthy nutritional changes/habits you would like to make
or adopt?

3. What is holding you back? What challenges are you facing?

Exercise and Movement

1. How are your current exercise habits affecting you every day, including
your mind and body?

2. What three exercise habits would you like to create or improve?

3. What is holding you back? What challenges are you facing?

Sleep

1. How are your current habits affecting your sleep?

2. What three habits would you like to create to improve, in order to sleep
better?

3. What is holding you back? What challenges are you facing ?

Your mind and soul

1. How are your current habits affecting your stress levels, outlook and
time?

2. What three things do you enjoy doing for yourself?

3. How can you plan to do these more often?

4. What is holding you back? What challenges are you facing?

These questions might sound simple but when you really take out the time
to answer, it makes you think and know who you really are and where you
really stand. This awareness is important to change. I wish all of you peace,
love and great health always!
 Testimonials

Over 9 lakh people across the globe have participated in ‘lifestyle change’
challenges over the last two years. Let us look at what people have to say
with regard to that one lifestyle change that made a massive impact on their
weight loss and health.

Mona Singh: The one thing which is steady is lemon water, virgin coconut
oil (VCO) and fruits in the morning. I’ve completely called off sugar and
prefer mostly rock salt or sea salt, and avoid table salt. I cook most of my
vegetables in mustard oil. The impact is that I don’t crave the wrong food, I
feel light, fresh and more active. But the biggest change in the few months
after following you, Luke, is that I’m now on very good terms with my
mind. It’s all a mind game, after all. Due to this, my concentration level,
sleep and food intake are improving. I am in love with myself all over again

Sona Moorjani: I’ve stopped stressing about weight loss and running from
pillar to post for counselling. I have stopped eating out completely and I
don’t miss outside food. I make a conscious effort to move more besides
going on walks. I’ve introduced raw food into my diet.

Swathi Rohit: I introduced oil pulling, lukewarm lemon water with honey,
lots of fruits, vegetable juice, mixed dry fruit snacks, and more raw veggies
for lunch and dinner to my diet, and I started using cold-pressed virgin
coconut oil and more of rock salt while cooking, and have been going on
daily walks. I’ve been feeling very positive, there’s no bloating at all. I have
lost weight, and have no craving for junk or outside food at all . . . all
thanks to you, Luke.
Jyottika Sharma: Thanks to your guidance, I have started having warm
lemon water thrice a day, cut off sugar completely, and switched to rock
salt, organic honey and jaggery. And I have increased my fruit consumption,
added flaxseeds and black sesame seeds to my diet; I do deep breathing
before eating to oxygenate, and eat mindfully now. The latest addition is oil
pulling. Thank you a million times . . . God bless you abundantly, always.

Puja Murari Agarwal: Two major changes were switching my cooking oil
to cold-pressed coconut oil and daily yoga and pranayama. I made other
small lifestyle changes too. The impact was good health and healthy weight
loss. I feel so light and my face has started glowing. All thanks to your
valuable tips.

Sunaina Bansal: So many changes . . . first having lemon water in the

morning, and then fruits until lunch. I now include fresh veggies and fruit in
my diet. And most importantly, started taking VCO and pumpkin, sunflower
and other seeds in my diet. The changes are awesome: the acidity problem
has been solved to a great extent, there are no more headaches, I don’t crave
for outside food. I’ve also stopped using white sugar and have instead opted
for honey and jaggery. I also try to do deep breathing before going to bed.
Thanks, Luke, for your valuable guidance, which has helped me to achieve
a healthy lifestyle.

Husain Anas: Consuming 1 tablespoon of raw cold-pressed coconut oil in

the morning with warm water has given me a somewhat flat stomach. It’s
second nature now. I wake up and gulp a tablespoon.

Leena Sethi: Luke, because of you I rediscovered my old self that had
gotten lost over the years. I also discovered a new me who can do
everything with your guidance. I started drinking more water, including
infused water, VCO or fresh coconut, whatever is available. I started eating
more fruits and vegetables, especially ‘Gold’ first thing in the morning.
I don’t punish myself with workouts but enjoy them. I have replaced
sugar with honey, and when I crave sweets, I eat a fruit. Result: I don’t
crave sugar as badly. I don’t crave food all the time. I am more energetic.
My skin is better. I understand myself better.

Sonal Dugad: Stretching exercises every morning, along with pranayama,

help me stay pain-free and relaxed. Further, I have started giving positive
affirmations for a peaceful mind and body. It’s doing wonders.

Jyoti Kokal: The major thing was detoxifying the liver, kidneys and lungs
with water and fruit. Post that, it’s easier to alkalize with morning lemon
water and 50 per cent raw salad/veggie juice with meals, and follow all
other tips after that consistently. My clothes fit better. I do not catch a cold
or get tonsillitis easily. Skin, nails and body temperature are better. I crave
millets and mostly clean home-made food—hardly any nutrition labels to
read, hardly eating out. Now, I have reduced overthinking and feel at peace.
My efforts since mid-2015 are also giving immense benefits. I feel healthy,
happy, lighter, mindful and more positive.
I have been able to introspect—finding, listing and letting go of ideals,
limiting thoughts and beliefs. It saves vital energy and remove all kinds of
life blocks. I’m so thankful and grateful for your countless kind-hearted
health tips and motivation. Luke, your posts have saved me and helped me
change my life.

Martingale Cercien: The most effective change is to keep the body

alkaline. That is to have lemon water in the morning and after meals after a
gap of 30–40 minutes, plus a carrot or cucumber before meals. I had been
suffering from severe acidity and heartburn, but I am 90 per cent cured now.
A big thanks to you. Other changes include intake of fruits, nuts, seeds,
coconut oil, breathing—all have helped me move towards a healthy
lifestyle. Thanks for your precious guidance.

Cauvrey Muthana: Having never exercised in my life, I began gymming

thrice a week and gained some much-needed weight—4 kg in 3 months.
Muscle weight/strength gain is also a big challenge for ecto-mesomorphs
like me. I’m far better at carrying my daughter around. Grateful!
Arune Soreng: I have changed my eating habits, which has helped me live
a more healthy life. I eat one fruit in the morning before breakfast, I eat the
right food every three to four hours, drink enough water . . . because of this
I have improved my metabolism. My body is fit and active.

Vima Viswam: I started oil pulling, replaced white sugar with jaggery,
stopped drinking tea (actually I was not a big fan of tea or coffee), added
more raw veggies and fruits to my diet; now I have started my 10k steps
active measure also. I’m feeling really happy within. There are fewer
cravings for junk food. And no-stress sleep. Thank you, Luke. Thank you
very much for inspiring us.

Mitali Satam: For the past seven months, I have been watching Luke’s
videos and posts, and I was so impressed. Gradually, I changed my lifestyle.
Luke made me analyse what my body could accept. Gradually, I reduced
my weight as well. When I wake up, I take hot water with honey, go for a
brisk walk and do breathing exercises. I have started using coconut oil in
the food; and use no spicy food. I eat dinner before 7.30 p.m., using green
gram often. I avoid some vegetables like cabbage, cauliflower and beans as
per Luke’s advice because I had hypothyroid. I drink water frequently, no
coffee or tea. And now I have lost 4.5 kg. My body feels so light. I am
active. I also had asthma because of GERD, but I am free from all these
problems, which were causing me mental stress. I was not aware of what
was happening within me, which doctor to consult . . . then, by just
following Luke’s advice, I am free from all these problems. All credit goes
to Luke. Thank you so much, Luke. You are truly awesome, not only for me
but for so many people across the world.
 Notes

Authors’ Note
1. Gina Kolata, ‘After The Biggest Loser, Their Bodies Fought to Regain
Weight’, New York Times, 2 May 2016, [Link]

Part I: Preparing for the Magic Weight-loss Pill

Chapter 2: Balanced Nutrition

1. ref: [Link] php.
2. Ibid.
3. Dorairaj Prabhakaran, Panniyammakal Jeemon and Ambuj Roy,
‘Cardiovascular Diseases in India: Current Epidemiology and Future
Directions’, Circulation 133, no. 16 (19 April 2016): pp. 1605–620,
[Link]
4. Gina Shaw, ‘Can Low Cholesterol Keep Your Brain Healthy?’,
[Link], 25 April 2014, [Link]
5. Dr Mercola, ‘Do You Take Any of These 11 Dangerous Statins or
Cholesterol Drugs?’, [Link], [Link]

Chapter 4: Sleep and Recovery

1. ‘Sleep loss limits fat loss, study finds’, [Link],
[Link]
2. ‘Stanford study links obesity to hormonal changes from lack of sleep’,
[Link], 6 December 2004, [Link]
3. Jon Hamilton, ‘Brains Sweep Themselves Clean Of Toxins During
Sleep’, [Link], 17 October 2013, [Link] and Arlet V.
Nedeltcheva, Jennifer M. Kilkus, Jacqueline Imperial, Dale A. Schoeller
and Plamen D. Penev, ‘Insufficient sleep undermines dietary efforts to
reduce adiposity’, Annals of Internal Medicine 153, no. 7 (5 October
2010): pp. 435–41.
4. Belinda Luscombe, ‘Your Brain Cells Shrink While You Sleep (And
That’s a Good Thing)’, [Link], 17 October 2013,
[Link]
5. James Gallagher, ‘Sleep “cleans” the brain of toxins’, [Link], 17
October 2013, [Link]
6. Dr. Mercola, ‘Do Sleeping Pills Live Up to Their Promises?’,
[Link], 21 April 2016, [Link]

Part II: The Most Powerful Lifestyle Changes and Habits to Lose
Weight and Keep It Off

#3 Correct your Vitamin D3 levels

1. Charlene Laino, ‘Low Vitamin D Levels Linked to Advanced Cancers’,
[Link], 4 October 2011, [Link]

#12 Sweat your weight off

1. Fiona Macrae, ‘Women absorb up to 5lbs of damaging chemicals a year
thanks to beauty products’, Daily Mail, 19 June 2007,
[Link]

#30 Brown sugar or white sugar

1. Dr Mercola, ‘Supporting Evidence for Aspartame-Alzheimer’s Link
Emerges’, [Link], 26 June 2014, [Link] and
‘Does Aspartame Cause Cancer?’, [Link], [Link]

#58 Intermittent fasting (IF)

1. Faris M.A., Kacimi S., Al-Kurd R.A., et al., ‘Intermittent fasting during
Ramadan attenuates proinflammatory cytokines and immune cells in
healthy subjects’, Nutrition Research 32, no. 12 (December 2012): pp.
947–55.

#59 Dry Fasting

1. Ioannis A. Papagiannopoulosa, Vassilis I. Siderisb, Michael Boschmannc
et al., ‘Anthropometric, Hemodynamic, Metabolic, and Renal Responses
during 5 Days of Food and Water Deprivation’, Forsch Komplementmed
20 (2013): pp. 427–433.
2. Suzanne Wu, ‘Fasting triggers stem cell regeneration of damaged, old
immune system’, [Link], 5 June 2014, [Link]
3. Maryam Vahdat Shariatpanahi, Zahra Vahdat Shariatpanahi, Shaahin
Shahbazi and Manoochehr Moshtaqi, ‘Effect of Fasting with Two Meals
on BMI and Inflammatory Markers of Metabolic Syndrome’, Pakistan
Journal of Biological Sciences 15, no. 5 (2012): pp. 255–258.
4. In Young Choi, Laura Piccio, Patra Childress et al., ‘Diet mimicking
fasting promotes regeneration and reduces autoimmunity and multiple
sclerosis symptoms’, Cell Reports 15, no. 10 (7 June 2016): pp. 2136–
146; and Aksungar F.B., Topkaya A.E. and Akyildiz M., ‘Interleukin-6,
C-reactive protein and biochemical parameters during prolonged
intermittent fasting’, Annals of Nutrition & Metabolism 51, no. 1 (2007):
pp. 88–95.
5. Suzanne Wu, ‘Fasting triggers stem cell regeneration of damaged, old
immune system’, [Link], 5 June 2014, [Link]
 Acknowledgements

I would like to offer my thanks and gratitude to:

All my clients—I have to thank every client I have ever had, because it is
through them that I have learnt more about the human body, the human
mind, medicine, metabolism, different effects of exercise, diet and lifestyle.
I truly thank every one of you for believing and trusting me with their
bodies and lives to help them achieve their goals or improve their health.
My Facebook and social media fans—I truly thank all of you for the
constant appreciation and motivation, and for being the ones out there to
apply all my lifestyle changes and proactively report back the amazing
effects on your weight and health.
My family—there is much they have to bear, what with my erratic
schedules and travel, and it would be impossible to put this all together if I
didn’t get to do what I wanted to do, and the way I wanted to do it. I know I
have compromised on family time and outings. So I truly appreciate the
sacrifices made to allow me to focus on this.
Milee and Penguin—for the endless support and ideas that have allowed
for this book to be completed. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Shilpa Shetty—it seems like we have known each other for ages now,
and every time we meet, you continue to inspire me to believe that lifestyle
is the way forward. You are a living example and role model of how to use
lifestyle as a magic pill.
 THE BEGINNING

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This collection published 2019

Copyright © Luke Coutinho and Anushka Shetty 2019
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Jacket images © Parag Chitale
This digital edition published in 2019.
e-ISBN: 978-9-353-05539-4
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