The Nutritarian Life with The Nutritarian Wife | Chef AJ LIVE! with Lisa Fuhrman

main floor anyway hey everyone and welcome to chef aj live i'm your host chef aj and this is where i introduce you to amazing people like you who are doing great things in the world that i think you should know about you know there's a saying behind every great man there's a great woman and it is no truer than today's guest you know if it wasn't for today's guest we might not have one of the greatest and most influential doctors in the plant-based world dr joel fuhrman and when you hear this story you will understand why because it wasn't his original intention to go to medical school if it wasn't for his wife lisa furman this might not have happened i can't wait for you to meet her we're calling today the nutritarian life with the nutritarian wife please welcome lisa fuhrman it's so great to see you again oh my gosh chef aj i'm thrilled to be here couldn't be more excited it is you know i think it's so important for people to hear your story because it was a fun story for one but you know there could have been two dr fuhrman's that is very true so i was pre-med when i met my husband i met him through his sister gail and we started dating and at that point he was an international coach for ice skating and i got the joy of seeing international competitions it was wonderful he also had his father had a chain of shoe stores that he was going to inherit and that's really where he was and as i would be going through my pre-med courses he would kind of go in a way uh he'd be envious of it and we were talking and the very first time that i told him i was pre-med he said why are you going to medical school you know what do doctors do but give you pills at that point he was very into nutrition nutrition was as much a passion of his as as the work that he did and i said to him why am i going i said why don't you go i said you could really have a great effect on other people and other doctors and maybe in your very small way change medicine change the way that doctors practice and you know it just took off and uh so we both went to medical school i was a year ahead of him i went to a new jersey state school and he went to upenn because it was the closest ivy league i convinced him to go to an ivy league school because i felt not only did he have to show patience but i wanted his peers to learn too and what not what's the best thing but to know that you came from a great school so that's really the intent and why he went to penn um yes i left in my third year so i consider myself a .5 md um it wasn't for me it was for him as much as he loved it was as much as i disliked it and so that was really it and that was the beginning of dr fuhrman that is so cool that people are asking are you from jersey i'm from jersey i'm actually from new york originally we'll go into that another time perhaps but yes i'm from new jersey i'm a hybrid you know it's so interesting lisa because you know dr fuhrman was such a wonderful ice skater and like you know people think oh maybe he could have gone to the olympics and maybe he could have but he wouldn't have this life influencing and helping all the people so he was set to go to the olympics it was six months prior that he had his accident and yes then i wouldn't have met gail and then joel wouldn't have met me and so yes you have to kind of say it was meant to be yeah but share it because you know sometimes when things happen us like in that like i can imagine if you're an olympic athlete it's got to be devastating but now i'm sure if he looks back he's pretty happy with the way his life turned out i think he is and i also think that uh you know what was very funny i was a chemistry major at college and going to medical school was the hardest thing i ever did right the first two years your book knowledge you have to study for your boards and then you go into clinics hardest thing i ever did and he said that ice skating was much harder than med school they both sound hard to me do you think you have finished medical school did you ever think about what type of specialty you would have psychiatry and i went in for the wrong reasons i should have gone and become a psychologist um i found out psychiatry was more about medicine than i anticipated and you know at that point i was old enough and when i left medical school and my choices were very slim i didn't really want to do anything in medicine at that point i wanted children so about a year later i became pregnant with my daughter my first daughter and then four daughters three daughters and one son later you know i became a a business person and i was a chemistry major and i became you know now i'm the operations officer for the two businesses that we have my husband joel was an economics major and became the doctor so as far as i was concerned we just switched roles that is something well you guys complement each other very well so you know you're in california now so do you like it i love it i do a happy dance all the time i'm very grateful and i'm grateful for what we do here i love our eat to live retreat i love it it's a passion it really is so cool but it's so i mean the weather's a lot better than new jersey right uh-huh and the produce because you guys are growing your own produce now well you know the whole thing is also and one of the things about being a nutritarian is because we don't use salt because we don't use sugar and we don't use oil your palate changes your tongue changes and the foods that you find um blah or bland become very you taste them all and why i'm bringing this up is that i can tell a pepper from new jersey from a pepper from california it is so different the california food the quality of the taste of the organic food is second to none yeah and that's so cool that you're growing it now yeah yeah we do we have 106 fruit trees and we've got i think 12 vegetable beds so we're good we're good and again it's you you can't appreciate the land as much as when you see the food grown you know i'm curious how your diet evolved like so when you were dating dr fuhrman how were you guys eating and did was it a great thing or okay so when i first met him as a sophomore uh and we didn't start dating at that point he came to visit his sister gail and i was in the dorm and he came and we sat and he and i just talked for three hours and at that time he was talking about the food at that time my sister-in-laws told me how they ate at home and it was due to joel's father that all this kind of happened in joel's life and joel was quite young when it all happened and his two sisters really didn't grab on to it like joel did it became a passion of joel's but when i met gail she was in my school and she told me how she had been brought up to eat and my response to her was you poor thing i was so conventional i really was and i was like md's know everything and you know i was that kind of very so joel when i first started dating him he said do you think you eat healthy i mean it's not an ordinary question a person would ask somebody and again i knew about joel i knew about the way of eating because i'd been friends with his sister so it didn't surprise me and i said of course i eat healthily i have corn flakes for the morning i with a milk and banana and i have for lunch i have you know an egg salad sandwich and for dinner i had chicken and a potato and vegetable i ate very healthfully that's what i thought and of course over time it changed um i could say a lot about that i had a couple of health problems um one thing was i had five urinary tract infections in four years of college and i was also diagnosed with pcos um at polycystic ovary syndrome and what that entails is it could mean that you might have trouble conceiving i had irregular periods when i was 20 years old i didn't have my period for six months and so i went to an endocrinologist and i was through blood work uh diagnosed that way um after eating this way so there became a point in time uh when i knew about fasting right because we all knew about natural hygiene that was the commonality that so many of us knew which is now the national health association but anyway through natural hygiene i knew about water fasting and i had gotten a urinary tract infection and it was a time when joel and i were together but i'm still living i was engaged to him at the time but i was living at home and he asked me to water fast when this urinary tract infection came upon us upon me and i said i can't do that i'm you know i'm living with my parents they'll know that i'm fasting how am i going to do this and his father got on the phone and he asked me to water fast so i did i secretly in my room fasted and i have to tell you the day was painful any time i urinated it was like a sharp knife going through me and the next day i traveled to go to joel's and by that time it really quelled the pain quelled everything quelled and the only thing i can tell you is that i only fasted for those two days i have never had a urinary tract infection since in addition to that um my pcos uh by the time i was in medical school and had doctors anytime to my you know i can get an appointment with a doctor no problem um i was undiagnosed they said you don't have pcos it must have been a misdiagnosis and of course that's their conventional way of saying something but indeed it just went away so those are two things that of my personal stories as through living this life but did i change my diet quickly um for the most part yes however when i i'm not a food addict makes very big difference so when i wanted to go have a a burger at beefsteak charlie's because i missed it i went and had a burger and joel was very good he would come with me he would see me eat it he wouldn't eat it himself but he understood when i wanted a piece of pizza he understood that so it was i would say i did about 90 except for those rare times and then what did happen what happened was that over time that beef steak charlie's i would have a terrible reaction to i remember having uh gone to uh atlantic city and there was a big cookie and it had a beautiful chocolate top and i went and had that and if i tell you i was up the whole night i had such a sugar high and the next day i felt so awful my body couldn't tolerate it anymore it was too clean to tolerate did i want a chocolate chip cookie i mean chocolate cookie like that never again so my own body um gave me enough signals to know that i just didn't want it anymore i psychologically followed what my physiology was telling me i love that i love that that'll give people a lot of hope and i love that you said yeah but you weren't a food addict so going off plan didn't make you keep going off plan no and you know i deal with all the people at our retreat now and i just had a conversation with them yesterday and the thing is is that we are a very small bubble the people who are nutritarians are very small and we have to make that bubble safe and our retreat is their safe place but there's a lot of anxiety when you leave the retreat right so what do you have to do you have to plan you have to have meals that you know you're going to make there's a lot of planning but the first thing that you have to do is you have to say i come first you have to say my health comes first that means that you have to protect yourself and you really have to and all that that entails what does that entail so you really have to and know that your son or your husband or your mother may not approve of what you're doing but over time as they see you becoming healthier instead of them disapproving it they're going to not only say great this is happening to you but how could this help me if it helped you so much how can it help me so in a way you're sending a message to your loved ones of what this can do not only for what it has done for yourself but what it could do for them yeah and what i love i listening to an interview you did a while back and because one of the questions is did your children ever rebel and one of the things i really liked about that is you know you always kept a clean house correct well what i say is don't make food a war zone so you have to understand that i was very lucky i gave birth knowing how i was going to feed my children and what did that mean in the house a hundred percent a hundred percent outside of the house you do what you think is best and that's how we lived when they had parties even though they were six years old i let them eat whatever was at the party i wasn't a believer i'm a conventional person at heart i wasn't a believer in making my child feel different they feel different uh they're going to feel different enough they don't have to feel different socially it's very important for children to want to be the same as everybody else and that's okay it's a part of growing up and so out of the house they were able to eat as they uh wanted but we educated them they're all nutritarians today my oldest is 34 my youngest is 20 he's in college and he has his challenges and he knows what to do and i trust him and i trust them that is fantastic i'm going to delve a little bit deeper than that but one thing before i forget because you had mentioned when dr fuhrman proposed how did he propose was he wrote he just said it's just we were together and he said would you like to marry me and i was like whoa i was very young at the time i got married at 23 and i said whoa that's all i remember saying to myself to him i said oh my gosh i'd love to but to myself i was like whoa how long have you guys been married it will be let's see we're married uh 40 years in september wow that's amazing yeah so you know you talked about like well just in case i would think people watching this have heard of you but like let's say they haven't they haven't heard the word nutritarian so what is that okay so we separate ourselves from everybody else only because nothing defined enough nothing defined it it's nutrient dense plant-based you know it's a funny thing because nutrient dense wasn't even words before joel it didn't even happen but what it is is that if you can think of what foods are the most nutrient dense and we don't talk about there are macronutrients in micronutrients macro is fat carbohydrate protein and micronutrients are vitamins minerals and most importantly antioxidants or phytochemicals the phytochemicals there are are thousands there are thousands but those happen to be the most anti-inflammation anti-cancer foods and so we stress those and if you want to think of an acronym there's g bombs greens beans onions mushrooms berries and seeds those are the most anti-inflammation anti-cancer foods that you can eat do you have to be vegan can you have some animal products chef aj i know you're a vegan and most of your listeners will be vegan and i'd say that it's great to be a vegan and we ourselves are vegans but there are some people older people who have a very hard time digesting protein and there are some people who are anorexic who'd have a very tart time and so those people there may be a time when you can have some animal products what we stress is nutrients micronutrients nice very good so let's see what some of those questions that we have that were sent in so you were talking about your kids uh when we were talking about your kids did they grow up knowing that they were eating differently than other people oh you bet so the very first you know we lived in a development um and development has people with magnifying glasses or what binoculars they watch everything and of course my children felt different um to the point of where they felt better than everybody else not a great thing um because your four-year-old can go over to the their friend and say why are you eating that that's not good for you you know that kind of thing so you have to kind of let them know that we're doing their parents your friends parents don't know better but it's best that you don't tell your friend right only ask that if they ask you then you can tell but when you start mouthing off to your friend it doesn't make for a good situation so we had to teach our children when and when not to speak how to speak to people right wow that's amazing you know the sos free part which you know i'm also sos free is sometimes i find more challenging for people than the other parts of the diet well salt is a it's a masquerader it masquerades other tastes it really people say you know when you say about salt to say it's a taste enhancer yeah it's a taste enhancer to the point where you don't want to stop eating it it's you know the world has come and learned corporations learned that salt makes people want to eat more and when you take away the salt which of course is so deleterious to your health when it comes to blood pressure and so many other ailments which is why we don't have salt but when you take away the processed salt the salt that's put into foods it takes a while but your taste buds change they become more sensitive to all the other flavors that innately we have and so the salt is not a good thing for our health and when it take it takes some time it takes about two three weeks some people longer but over time they will taste and appreciate whole natural foods that much more that's great you know is it true i think i remember dr fuhrman once telling a story about one of your children coming home from school or saying something like why don't the other parents love their children because they were you know i honestly have to say that that's always a question it's at this point i think my children feel they were so lucky um and and a long time ago you know there were some explaining to do to them but you know the idea is that we have never we've only told them that we we eat this way out of love and concern for your health right that's why we eat this way and i tell it's very difficult for parents who have children 10 years old 15 years old because they've been living one way and all of a sudden you want to tell eat another way and so the starting point is to talk about eating this way you found out that it's such a healthy good way of eating and if the kids say why don't other parents they just don't know better right that's it they don't know better but it's we're so lucky we found out this information and now we want to give it to you and what i say to them is let them pick out those foods that are there that's their favorites and start with those yeah that makes sense uh how is your son managing at college is how is the healthy eating and yes so remember what i said they're all nutritarians they're all know it but it is tough and is he completely eating he's doing the best he can and so the funny thing is when we had uh kovid uh at the retreat we were my son was stuck at the retreat for seven weeks and it was where he had to eat the retreat food and i have to say all his acne cleared up so what does that mean that means he wasn't eating all nutritarian right he would go out with his friends but the idea that his acne cleared up and he loved the food he loved the food so that when he went back to jersey so he he learned then how important it was to eat healthy on his own level and so he does the best he can and you know what i don't ask whatever he does he looks great he feels great and you know that's it but that's very compelling uh uh research that happened because he can see it on his body you know for teenagers what's more important than how you look right absolutely so that yeah if more people would just pay attention to how they looked and feel in the relationship that food has on that you know that's correct 100 percent she says do you have a social media handle and how can we learn more from you because when i dealt i was digging deep and it's like there's not a lot out there about you you know i i really i'm i'm a busy lady i i kind of run two businesses and i i try to stay away from social because i just can't i don't have time you know it's uh it's just too difficult for me and i have four wonderful children that i have a lot to do with yeah nice good so like when you're because it sounds like you know in in what the kids had no other choice but to eat healthy at home and then they could do what they wanted when outside of the home like if they had play dates did did other children come in and get excited yeah they love the food oh my gosh my one daughter she's my so i have three girls and then i say i have a fourth daughter she used to come every kid was i was happy they could come in the kids that were closest to my kids opened our refrigerator i mean they just went in and took food but they all loved my girl's boyfriends all of the kids really had a great time i have to tell you a funny story though uh one it was once my son's kid friends one friend brought over dunkin donuts to a party in my house brought dunkin donuts and i'm thinking holy shoot now i have to tell you his mom came in as a patient to my husband so he brings in dunkin donuts she knew exactly how we're eating and i'm just like blown away what do i do you know i don't want to make the kid feel bad he's obviously not knowing and i just honestly i just i threw him away i couldn't i said in my whole life so things like that didn't really happen too much when my kids had friends over what they did they would make smoothies so they would take all the frozen bananas and then they'd take fruit and they would make concoctions and they loved it so we made it a fun thing you know for halloween and i know you had somebody ask about what did we do for halloween when the girls were very young i really didn't know what to do so i gave out things like raisins just bad stuff and then i came across something called oriental trading it's a catalog and what did i do i bought neon you know glow-in-the-dark necklaces and instead of being the schlubby house i became the house that everybody came to because i would buy like hundreds of them and everybody would put them on and of course when did they go halloween trick-or-treating it was dark out so it was the best thing and at one point my kids in bringing home the candy um and at the beginning when uh the kids were small i did let them have three candies so again remember i'm keen on not having my children rebel how could you make it so they don't rebel so in my head yeah you can give them a couple of bucks of money sure you can promise this that i didn't get there yet in my mind i had to say i have to give them something so i gave them three pieces of candy over time i got a little bit more creative and it got to the point where none of them i would make them their favorite meal that night so that was really good and none of them really wanted the candy in fact the last time my son went trick-or-treating they opened the candy and they just went can you imagine that people eat this so again it happened over time but they all learned and they got it that's really that's wonderful to hear that you know so let's see and they go to the questions that have been sent in and of course oh you know what i see one live though that i'm going to ask first because this is an important distinction brenda says how does the nutritarian diet differ from whole food plant-based because we emphasize micronutrients that's really it and when you feed your body micronutrients the body's physiologic cravings disappear we have psychological cravings and we have physiological cravings and the biological cravings disappear because you're filling the body with the nutrients it's so hungry for so micronutrients it's all about h equals n over c your health is term determined by the nutrients per calorie great perfect other than your immediate family yourself dr fuhrman and the four children did anyone else join you like your siblings dr fuhrman oh yes so so i could tell you a phenomenal story about my dad so and i'll tell you something very funny uh we have time so i can tell you this my mother is a jewish woman and jewish mothers have power and uh it was uh so she was very strong in our lives is very strong in our lives still and my husband is very strong his passions are strong so you can't imagine what happened when this uh jewish man right because you'd think she was happy that he was jewish nothing like that in my family it didn't matter but here comes this guy saying about food you don't need to eat meat you don't need to eat animal products and here's the strong mother and so they bumped heads my mother thought he was going to kill me honestly and you know the funny story so for they bumped heads for quite a while i say maybe for a few years they were my mother's like oh my gosh i can't even believe this i would never breastfeed my child you know things that you know because she was old school right and i was brought up very conventionally so they bumped heads how did this end up being where now my mother loves him to death she loves her my mother works for us my father works for us crazy stories if anybody can change this is a crazy story so now let's go a few years my mother's now falling diet my mother really very quickly got you know onto it respected it at the beginning it was different but my dad was from brooklyn and he's a meat potatoes guy he loved his two desserts a corn muffin a black and white for those people on the east coast they know what i'm talking about but anyway he had a heart attack when he was 70 years old and he had a quadruple bypass and we asked the doctor what can we expect prognosis wise and he said well if you get 10 years if he gets 10 years consider yourselves lucky and at that point my father said okay i'm ready to follow the nutritarian diet you have to imagine how painful it was for me not to see my family family respect the plan right i'm living it i'm seeing miraculous recoveries and i'm saying now my dad had a heart attack my son was four months old every day i went to the hospital you couldn't make me not go to the hospital and i of course medical trained i know how bad it is first a baby to be there but i was there all the time so my dad moving on goes and follows the nutritarian diet and i would say now my son is 20. my father is doing phenomenally but i have to say this to you his ejection fraction which is the amount of blood that amount of blood that your heart pumps out right your part the whole job of your heart is to pump blood to your organs so if that goes down you're in trouble your organs are not getting enough blood and your heart is working faster and harder to get the blood out and when you have some dead heart tissue it can't work as well so his ejection fraction went down well about five years ago his cardiologist said norm he said let me check your ejection fraction let's see where it is because this cardiologist happens to not only know my husband but follows the plan and he checked his ejection fraction and it went back to normal in other words from not having a heart that can pump well it went back to where it's pumping very well my father is god bless him is celebrating his 90th birthday um this in march so i so i have that my sister randy had her thing going on um she was a she is a cancer survivor she also didn't follow it when she called me and cried to me about having um the mammographer the person who's the person who did the mammography told her that was cancer didn't even have it from the doctor she was hysterical and i said brandi you are now becoming a nutritarian everything that you mouth you're going to have joe tell you what to do and i said i don't care what the prognosis is i don't care what the staging is as long as you follow my husband this is going to be life-saving and you're going to live a long life and she said to me that it gave her a feeling of control because when you have cancer you feel so out of control because it's all in the doctor's hands now but what she put in her mouth was the one thing she could control and my sister god bless her is doing excellently and in fact she's in charge of our success program which is our food addiction program which is doing very well vowels are great those are i mean the thing about your dad is it just shows it's never too late most people are too late but your body heals itself giving the right environment because a lot of people would give up oh but yes yeah you know i should have your dad on the show because that is an incredible story right there it's an incredible story yeah and you know my family the jewish family that we are they won't allow me to publish it because they feel that it will jinx it i get you understand this is a position are you kidding it's still congratulations mazel tov tell him so thank you some nice comments mrs dr joel looks exquisite by the way thank you and that was lisa fuhrman is so charming and gracious says jan and and cersei says what advice would you give parents who switched the diet for their kids at an older age it's so much harder isn't it it is so much harder but the thing is that number one i say leave things around the house that talk about health if you can and the nutritarian plan but talk to them and explain to them what's going on for you and how you'd like them to participate but remember they weren't you're making a choice for yourself they're not making the choice and they're old enough you know if they're in their teens they're going to want to just do what their friends do give them some slack the problem is you have to protect yourself so if you have to you have to do a lot of different things and i can go on and on about that you'd have to make a separate area for yourself you have to really prepare for yourself but try to make it as healthy as you can with them still liking what they're eating otherwise they're going to repel you cannot force any child because they will sneak sneak sneak that's all i have to say you got to make it so it's transparent they have to be transparent to you you have to be for giving back and you just leave things around the house as they get older they're not going to want to read it right now but as they get older you never know they might want to read something and as they see you're feeling better you're doing better they're going to be grateful there's nothing a child wants more than a healthy parent give them that gift and hopefully they will follow yeah do you have a favorite of dr fuhrman's best-selling books i do i would say super immunity is my favorite fun that's my mine is fast food genocide you know what i understand that completely i think fast food justice is great and i guess i was thinking more or less for people about their own health but certainly i think historically societal wise fast-food genocide is wonderful what i love about dr fuhrman's work and by the way guys he's going to be on the show in like less than three weeks he's already booked for february 22nd is he's one of the few plant-based doctors that really believes in and understands and treats food addiction because whether somebody's nutritarian or whole food plan exclusive people can be healthy but what they don't understand is if they're a food addict they can't have they can't dabble in like a little flower and a little sugar and all that stuff and he really understands it and that's really what i appreciate about him so much yes for sure i think food addiction is real and it's listen look at the society we live in you know even if you weren't a food addict you become a food addict because the food itself they're made corporate makes food so you become addicted to it i love that even if you weren't before you pretty much are gonna be if you keep eating i love that and that is true and that's what they intended that's right exactly people would love to know what your favorite meals are like your children's and dr furman's and like what do they love to eat you know um okay i would say my favorite is the thanksgiving loaf that we have we have a terrific thanksgiving loaf which is like uh i don't know it's lentil walnuts and a whole bunch of things that's probably mine the other one i think we all happen to love is the zucchini ravioli or zucchini lasagna i think that's a really great favorite of ours you know i happen to love this very little thing that we do and it's very simple you take tofu and you make them in about half inch slices and you put tomato sauce on top and you dehydrate them and if i tell you how much i love that another thing that i do which i happen to love is i take sweet potato i bake the sweet potato and then i put it into the dehydrator and it's wonderful i love all these things that are very simple i don't really have to make anything that's really big but i think that pretty much is it and i also my favorite actually is banana smoothies i love the bananas smoothies things who does most of the cooking you are doctor well i think in the past it was me only because he was so busy um but uh you know we're both very busy people and we're fortunate that we right now eat at the retreat um before that uh we would both if it was on the weekends we generally shared the big the cooking we would make a tremendously big salad um and also prepare for the week there's one dish that is today my son will tell you it's his favorite nutritarian food and that is that we take kale and we chop the it we steam the kale take of course the stem off chop it up and then as a sauce all i do is soy milk and cashews you put that together and it's delicious and i put it on vegetables and then i put it also with sweet potato and i add a little bit of that sauce i put cashews in a the vitamix and i add the soy milk just to the point of where the cashews are filled uh the soy milk fills up to the cashew level uh and i blend it in the make it a real smoothie sauce and it's great now i will tell you my husband has changed it up so that half his uh cashews and half his hemp seeds i haven't done that um but certainly that's you know just to get a healthier sauce but that's my favorite nice my sons that's fantastic here is a question from michelle who's watching live any suggestions for grandparents when grandchildren don't eat plant-based well i think you have to serve them what they like in the sense of everything that's not animal products so you've got to dig a little bit and you've got to figure out what do they like take them to the health you know take them to the produce lanes and say what do you like here you know and and or ask them on the phone what kinds of things like what kinds of vegetables do you like what kind of fruit do you like make something you think that they'll like you have to be a little bit creative and you have to think about their needs but ask them to help you and say look i i'm i'm eating this way i want you to try it try for grandma you know and the whole thing about a grandparent to grandchild is you have to establish a loving relationship first that comes first and then trent be transparent with them tell them about what you're doing and see how they react kids really there isn't a child out there who doesn't want to have a grandparent who listens to them or get them some toys from oriental trader don't make it about the food maybe i don't know i think you can make it about the food you just have to know your kid yeah absolutely let's see i saw oh what what do you guys do when you travel how do you maintain the diet easy and domestically we go to whole foods all the time we always pick hotels that have kitchens and we make sure we have it and uh you know it's easy and then when it's international we go to farmers markets what fun internationally to go to farmer's markets and then you buy the freshest produce and even if you don't have a kitchen you can make breakfast and and you know lunch is easy you have a salad you go get soup somewhere anyway that's a whole different story nice nice i don't know if this this one might be too personal so feel free not to answer from trisha do your children date people who are vegan they date anybody it doesn't have to be just vegan they love i can tell you my oldest daughter loves when somebody's vegan but no nice uh here's a question what do you do for exercise run lift weights hike bike swim all of that stuff but i'm a runner and i also hike an awful lot and i lift weights where you live now it must be great the hiking i love it love it love it i love it jean says i love lisa and dr furman so yeah florence she just told you her workout routine fantastic do you have other what other self-care practices do you recommend for staying in good health asks faith you know i've just gotten to the point of cosmetics um where i'm also trying to become more clean in that regard so i've picked up some cosmetics that i love um one of the things that we sell do to me and finding a product that i happen to love is uh organic essence it's a skincare line which you can find on drfurman.com and the pack packaging is all paper you can imagine and it's just the best ingredients so i've also been buying cleaner cosmetics wherever i can and however i can i haven't used deodorant for the last 30 years i don't know chef aj do you used to use this i don't use deodorant i don't know because i don't smell i know that's what i'm saying if you eat this way you don't exude a follower i don't know it's i don't use deodorant or antiperspirant because we're supposed to sweat i mean charles do i stink ever i don't know no i don't think so people would tell me and i haven't used deodorant also the only time that i feel that i smell is when i'm on a plane i feel that in the past so i'll put on uh this very natural deodorant that we also sell um but i for the most part don't guess what else i don't do i never shampoo my hair but do you use conditioner yes yes all the time all the time and and i rub my hair so that the oils come out you know i rub the scalp and i and then the oils just come out and i never i haven't used a shampoo and again years and years and years well that does save money and people are asking are there any healthy hair dyes that you could recommend you know um what makes you think i dye my hair oh i know the person asking the question oh no i'm the only 62 year old that doesn't go gray that's what i have to say no i i wish i did um i can tell you that i just went and got my hair done and fortunately did not burn my scalp for some reason i came to california maybe i'm eating eating cleaner than i did all these other ones were burning my scalp i don't know i think um any ammonia base she took out one that was an ammonia based one my hair i will never go gray i this is the conventional person that i am i will never go gray so healthy or not i'm i'm not going gray that's my bad thing sorry you know and i think i i don't think people i think when people eat really clean like we do like we can be allowed a few indiscretions if you will like that you know what i mean yeah it's fun it's fun it makes me feel younger looking and you know i do my nails fancy thank you me too my nails aren't that fancy see i i can't do that much but i do somewhat yeah it makes me feel good exactly thank you lisa so this is a fun question from kim what i'm wondering what hobbies and activities she likes to do with dr fuhrman like puzzles or games or anything like that if only we had time but i tell you a past time of hours is that we watch tv together and right now we're hooked on a show which i'm embarrassed to say it's called shameless it is the most fascinating show that you can ever imagine but that is our i wouldn't even say it a guilty pleasure so joel and i um mostly hiked together and um occasionally there was one time recently along we played cards it was the sweetest time it was he and i just playing cards it doesn't happen often we mostly watch tv he and i are extremely busy busy people and he is really working on the ask the doctor forums that we have uh every night he's answering questions um and so i'll go start the tv and then he'll come in and for the last two hours and we're binging and we can't stop watching and one of us says do you think it's time and we're like yes about 11 11 30. oh my goodness that's cool so i love that you're real people and watch real tv shows here's an interesting question from susan i know you guys have a food addiction program yes they eat to live retreat but that people can work with your counselors and she says i'm addicted to all food even my whole food plant-based no oil meals which i have been now for the last five years it's crazy because i will eat four times more than my hubby who eats the standard american diet way i go to bed thinking about food and wake up thinking about food does food addiction ever go away even if it's healthy food wow so again i i can't answer that i would want her to dive deeper into what the obsession is about um and if it's you know it's something that i think she has to work through um because you can't there has to be something behind that obsession yeah uh-huh you really want me to ask that the person that's texting me uh no because we we play uh we play these games um i don't know if you've ever heard of jack box i play with with the mcrae family it's really it's like well you know with the pandemic we couldn't see people but also they live in maryland and i live here so i couldn't anyway so it's a way to play like really really fun games online like you know games that you would play in person but they found a way to do it so you can play them on zoom now and that's like we'll we'll invite them we'll see if they they do that okay let's see i'm scrolling through the questions and i know i know there was another one in here for you because so many came in in advance any friends that eat this way were other than influence my best friend is a nutritarian nice and so i guess we just kind of meet those kinds of people yeah i guess like attracts like right yeah yeah yeah let's see there's just so many comments really nice comments i'm like why is she never going gray because i'm never going gray either same reason because we're both aries and we're vain that's a good answer good answer probably you know if i could go like a pretty gray like you know you've seen people like where it's just beautiful all over i wouldn't do it i know there's a certain elegance there is definitely a certain elegance i don't think i'll carry that elegance yeah the question is do i color my hair not all the time but i don't personally do it like once in a while i'll let her do it but like most of the time during the pandemic i didn't but yeah sometimes when i get it cut she'll put a little color on but but you know my gray's back here so like nobody sees it anyway so what the heck you know michelle says dr fuhrman is a gardener he makes his own compost yes he does yes for a long time now that's so cool let's see i'm a huge fan of dr fuhrman says paul chatlin duh okay we i mean of course you are yeah uh oh yeah here so you this is a fun question what does your typical day look like because every guest lisa on the show doesn't matter if they're vegan or not gets asked what do you eat for a day oh today i had blueberries so my daughters i plug plug plug here i am plugging away my daughters have a brand called doc's daughters and they make overnight oats and today i took a box of blueberries that i got from costco organic blueberries and i took half of my daughter's uh banana i can't think anyway one of her overnight oats and i took the half and i put that in a bowl and i put chia hemp and flax seed in the bowl and i had that for breakfast i also took because i was i like to pick and i picked one of our dehydrated sweet potato and i also took half of my tofu with tomato sauce so i really was just that that was a conglomerate kind of thing and banana foster that's what it is um for lunch i have salad and a soup and for dinner don't forget i'm eating the retreat food now but the morning breakfast i always make myself uh and you know what i used to make when i was in new jersey i would make these wonderful smoothies um just you know piling it up with bananas and fruit and then i put in a bunch of kale and a bunch of seeds and i always had that and for lunch always a big salad what's really fun about a salad is you could work together husband and wife or the kids and you just add anything you want to the salad and then i would make the greatest dressings i mean my dressings i started to invent dressings and one of the dressings i really invented was if i really like to soup i would add some vinegar and i'd add some nuts to the soup uh putting it in the vitamix of course and maybe even some raisins and i would get this new taste just by using the soup as the base um so that was kind of it that's a great idea you know somebody's commenting trisha how pretty your daughters are and they are very pretty and beautiful in fact but what's interesting is none of them look alike all three of them look like they're not even related i know it's a crazy thing it's absolutely nuts we go from talia to jenna to cara to sean sean and jenna look what the most alike cara looks like my side of the family talia more like joel said jen is a combo and sean's a combo yeah it's so interesting about that so yeah and actually two of your daughters have been on the show so we'll have to get the other two kids on some time and we wouldn't have been the whole family uh there's a question why uh from sandy why did you guys move to california very good question um serendipitously wasn't planning on doing a retreat wasn't planning on anything until about a few years ago maybe in 2018 we got a an email from somebody bringing up the retreat again we had thought about doing the retreat in flemington um and it fell through our plans fell through this was many years ago and so as we were getting older we thought we'd retire my old distorter was in california so we felt six months we'd be in california six months in new jersey and my uh sister randy who works in our success program she's the director of our outreach program she never goes into the md office or rarely does and she picked up an email and here was a guy who said we found a house we think it would be a great retreat for you guys come to san juan capistrano and so we go to san juan capistrano and we see it my two daughters hadn't didn't want to even come but when we saw the whole thing we were all blown away so that brought us the idea of the retreat again my one daughter was studying pre-med in philadelphia her friend was in the same building with her said why don't you come with me to san diego to study for the mcat and so my daughter says mom and dad i'm going to san diego so we after seeing the house that was in san juan capistrano it didn't work out the house wasn't perfect and my daughter coming to san diego we said why don't you guys when you go there jenna and cara were going look for a place for us maybe we can do a retreat in san diego and that's really how it came about that's amazing i love that i love that story uh so let's see who uh denise says does dr fuhrman ever ice skate anymore does anybody in the family you know he really uh rarely he really has transformed that love of skating into skiing skiing his is his passion nice your passion that's the one thing you won't get in san diego but you don't have to go too far to find well that's another plus for joel yeah stop skipping a jump so stephanie says mushrooms are part of the g bombs what is your favorite way to cook them um you know i the main thing is that we um water saute them we use some balsamic vinegar that we can put in it and i put it in my salads that's pretty much what i do yeah and and so they're saying can you microwave them and keep the water for flavor or do you need to discard it because of the toxic stuff in mushrooms no i think that's fine i think it's okay to microwave and keep the the water you can put it as far as your with your vegetable stock yeah absolutely kathy says do you guys do any retreats on the east coast nope uh not anymore we're west coasters she can come yeah no it's it's i saw it it's beautiful i i on the way to mexico once i i didn't see any of you guys there but i i think oh yes you should definitely next time you're on the way come over we'd love to have you oh beautiful so thank you i mean the house just the view man i mean what a great place to go to just just come by anytime just to renew you know well gosh this is so funny you should do more you're very good you should do more uh you know invite me and i'll be happy to come yeah absolutely well it's so fun hearing about you and your story you know what is dr fuhrman is funny like in person like i mean i mean with you guys he's very he you know he doesn't always joke around but when he does it's very funny yes because like when he gives lectures he you know if people don't get his jokes he'll go like well that was a joke you know like and so he i like he kind of it's goofy sometimes but i really like his sense of humor and i'm wondering if he's like daddy yes he's funny that's good well i'm glad well you guys are a great team and thank you both so much for the work you do and your kids too i mean almost all of them are doing you too look what you do how much you created and yeah you know do you not feel it's a gift yeah no it's so fun it's really fun helping people it really is and so we've heard from everybody except for sean and jenna and your dad so if they ever want to come on let me know jenna would love to i know that one oh absolutely you're going to have to wait a few years yeah her i i do have jenna's email so i can contact her but i didn't your dad's story is like to me that is the most hopeful of anything because i live in a 55 and over community and i just see people going like this with their heart the fact that somebody at 70 could not only improve it but improve it to the degree that he did i mean the doctors must be astounded at his correct absolutely but i have to say this my mother-in-law isabelle is nine going to be 94. and she is what we call the game coordinator at eat on italy retreat she goes every night she's here she lives two miles away from us she's completely depend independent she drives her car she comes to retreat and she plays games with the ladies at night it's hysterical but she is phenomenal so she's another person just doing so well knock on wood i would love to meet both of them they sound amazing and i and the story of healing and you know you know i forgot jesse but i will ask us even because it's so interesting that you guys are so knowledgeable food addiction but really being overweight wasn't a thing in either of your families was it no no yeah we were just uh brought up correctly my you know considering the fact that my parents were conventional my mom conventional her mom conventional we always knew enough about portion control and we always knew that you know my mother didn't let me have any more than two cookies a day and i guess for myself um i'm just a different caliber because i food is not that important to me although the more i eat wholesome foods the more i become a foodie i have to say this instead of you know i i love the food we eat and when you know that it's healthy man you just want to you're so you want it so i was never a foodie you know ice cream i loved ice cream don't get me wrong but i wasn't obsessed with it now i can see the beauty of the foods we eat and how delicious and i love them so yeah i agree i think yeah i think i i mean i think our food is delicious and i feel bad for people that that uh you know you want to think i also love about dr fermi always says you know it's really hard to live in both worlds when you have a foot in both worlds it's really hard because then you never really enjoy either exactly and not only that but if you're not yourself you know you have to be who you are and you need and you know somebody said to me boy dr firm doesn't care what other people think about him does he and i said but why should he he's proud of who he is he's kind he he's transparent he's passionate same with me if you don't like how i eat well that's that's on you i'm proud of myself and look lady or look friend or look this is what if you really like me you really care about me you'll be happy for me you wouldn't be pushing your stuff on to me yeah like that's good you guys are great well kim says just like what we started thank you for encouraging dr fuhrman to go to medical school so we can all benefit from this information this uh yeah and denise says dr fuhrman's amazing we really appreciate what he does but now you know who we have to thank for because without lisa he might either be an olympic skater or a shoe salesman he put in a lot of hard work to get where he is today absolutely that's great well i can't wait he'll be on in a few weeks so we can't tell i'm sure he'll he'll hear how great this was well thank you so much lisa my pleasure chef aj it's really a pleasure to chat with you thank you and thanks all of you for watching another episode of chef aj live please come back tomorrow when we have another doctor's wife because guess what is mary mcdougall there's a bunch of you out there apparently yeah take care

Channel: CHEF AJ

Views: 39,288

Keywords: plant based, chef aj, weight loss, food addiction, chef aj recipe, plant based diet, vegan kitchen, vegan recipe, plant based recipes, plant based diet for beginners, plant based meals, chef aj ultimate weight loss, chef aj recipes, weight loss journey, plant based weight loss, weight loss tips, author, chef aj live, cooking, diet, health, healthy, nutrition, vegan, vegan eating, vegan living, veganism, podcast, chef aj live youtube, plant based diet recipes

Id: ak3LUC-ARng

Length: 58min 3sec (3483 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 06 2022