TULSA — Whether you want to get your “summer body” ready or just want to have a healthier lifestyle, some doctors say you don’t need trendy diets, gym memberships or even prescriptions to get there.
Jimmy Rothrock was 5 feet 7 inches tall and 205 pounds with joint pain, high cholesterol, inflammation and a serious distrust for doctors.
Rothrock said, “(Doctors’) answer for everything was to push a pill at me. I knew in my heart that god didn’t design me to swallow pills for every ailment in life.”
Then, he met Mark Sherwood, who explained, “Most of our disease processes, today in our world, to the tune of 85 or 90 percent, are self-driven or self-chosen. We just need to know how to get out of that.”
Sherwood is a naturopathic doctor at Functional Medicine Institute in Tulsa. He said you don’t need a pill cabinet full of prescriptions to be healthy and breaks down your actual prescription into five categories.
Nutrition
Sherwood said, “There are foods that are real foods, and we have foods that we call ‘foods’ but were never foods.”
He suggests getting rid of sugar, processed foods, and most grains and replacing those with fruits, vegetables, good fats and proteins.
The doctor said you should follow a 75-25 rule: 75 percent of your plate should be fruits and veggies, and 25 percent should be lean protein.
Sleep
“Sleep is not a waste of time. We have to get seven to eight hours a night. There are several processes, including hormone regulation, that has to happen with effective sleep,” Sherwood said.
Movement
Sherwood explained that movement doesn’t necessarily mean going to a gym. “Do we need to pick things up and move them and create some resistance? Yes. Do we need to move things around to push blood around and call that cardiovascular training? Yes. In other words, we need to work on sitting less and moving more.”
He recommends 150 minutes of dedicated activity, even walking, per week.
Stress Management
Sherwood said, “We have to understand that stress is not a thing; it’s something that we do. In other words, it gives us control over that.”
Relationships
Sherwood explained, “You will become like the five people you hang out with the most. Just analyze that. If you hang out with people that suck the life out of you, it tells a story. But if you hang out with people that give into your life and encourage you to do things well, you’re going to be better.”
Jimmy Rothrock followed these steps and started to see the results, saying, “Slowly, my sinus issues went away. My drainage issues went away. I no longer needed any of those medications.”
He is now down to his high school waist size and no longer in pain.
And of all the diet trends out there - Dash, Paleo, Keto - Dr. Sherwood says there are benefits to all of them because they remove foods that create disease and inflammation. But the best diet option, if you had to go with one, he says is the Mediterranean diet. He also suggests intermittent fasting.
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