Dr. Andrew Weil’s Wellness Diet
Time Magazine’s cover story on aging gracefully. Alternative medicine guru Dr. Andrew Weil is on the cover, and the magazine excerpts a portion dealing with diet from his new book, Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Physical and Spiritual Well-Being
The diet is not specifically aimed at weight loss, and indeed, Dr. Weil himself looks a bit chunky in the photographs printed in Time (pictured left). Perhaps he could use a little physical exercise — something not specifically covered in the portion of his program excerpted. But even though weight loss is not a primary focus of the diet, it eliminates or limits most of the foods that end up being a problem for people trying to drop some pounds, including foods that are overly processed, foods like soft drinks that contain high fructose corn syrup, sweets, carbohydrates like bread, pasta, and commercial cereals, and fats like butter and trans-fat–containing margarine. By eliminating these foods, cutting calories becomes easier.
Although Dr. Weil recommends a lot of fruits, vegetables, and other fresh foods as sources of nutrients, he still feels it is necessary to take supplements, which his company conveniently sells in personalized mixes with the customer’s name printed on the packets (pictured right). Given the excellent foods in his core diet, the supplements don’t add much, and the money they cost is probably best put into purchasing high quality fresh food instead.
Here’s our overview of the Dr. Weil Wellness Diet program:
Variety and quality
- Maximize fresh foods, minimize processed foods, especially fast food
- Eat lots of fruits and vegetables
- Strive for variety in every meal, with none of the three macronutrients underrepresented
Calorie intake
- To maintain a healthy weight, most adults need between 2,000 and 3,000 calories daily, with women and men with smaller bodies tending towards the bottom of that range
- However, daily activity below normal will reduce the number of calories needed, while vigorous exercise will increase caloric needs
- The ideal macronutrient mix is:
- Carbohydrates: 40%–50%
- Fats: 30%
- Protein: 20%–30%
Macronutrients
Carbohydrates: Dr. Weil gives the following tips for dealing with carbohydrates:
- Women: 160–200 grams daily
- Men: 240–300 grams daily
- Limit consumption of bread, packaged snack items, and other products high in wheat and sugar
- Get most of your carbohydrates from whole grains (excluding whole wheat), beans, winter squashes, and sweet potatoes
- Eat pasta only in moderation, cooked al dente
- Avoid soft drinks and other sources of high fructose corn syrup
- Eat 40 grams of fiber daily in the form of fruit, vegetables, beans and whole grains (excluding whole wheat)
- Commercial cereal is an acceptable source of fiber if it has 5 grams or more of bran per serving, and if the label reveals no other ingredients that should be limited
Fat: Dr. Weil passes along the following tips about fats:
- For those who eat 2,000 calories a day, 600 should be from fat, about 67 grams, with no more than a fifth of that from saturated fats
- Sources of saturated fats include butter, cream, cheese, and full-fat dairy products, unskinned chicken, fatty meats and products made with coconut and palm-kernel oils
- Your main cooking oil should be extra-virgin olive oil; for neutral oil, go with expeller-pressed organic canola oil, or high-oleic versions of sunflower and safflower oil (avoid regular safflower and sunflower oils, corn oil, cottonseed oil and mixed vegetable oils)
- Never use margarine, vegetable shortening, or other partially hydrogenated fats (which contain trans fat); and read the labels of processed foods to avoid foods made with these products
- Remember that healthy fats are contained in avocados and nuts, especially walnuts, cashews, and almonds
- For omega-3 fatty acids, eat salmon, sardines, herring, black cod, hempseeds, flaxseeds and walnuts
Protein: Here’s what Dr. Weil has to say about protein:
- Within a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet eat 80–120 grams of protein a day, less if you suffer from liver, kidney, or autoimmune disease or have allergies
- Aim to get more of your protein from vegetable sources, especially from soybeans and other beans, and decrease consumption of protein from animal sources, except for fish and lowfat dairy products
Phytonutrients
Phytonutrients will protect against age-related diseases.
- Eat a wide variety of mushrooms, fruits, and organic vegetables, especially berries, tomatoes, orange and yellow fruits, and dark leafy greens
- Eat cabbage and related vegetables regularly.
- Include soy foods in your diet, like tofu, miso, and edamame (but take it easy on the soy sauce)
- Drink unsweetened white, green or oolong tea, and avoid coffee
- When drinking alcohol, choose red wine
- Occasionally enjoy dark chocolate with a minimum cocoa content of 70%
Vitamins and minerals
You should be getting plenty of vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients in your daily consumption of fresh foods and produce. But in addition, Dr. Weil recommends the following.
- The Dr. Weil “antioxidant cocktail”: 200 milligrams of Vitamin C plus 400 IUs of good quality vitamin E
- 200 micrograms of good quality selenium
- 10,000–15,000 IUs of mixed carotenoids
- A multivitamin-multimineral supplement which includes folic acid and vitamin D, but without iron or preformed vitamin A (retinol)
- Calcium citrate, 1,200–1,500 milligrams for women, up to 1,200 milligrams for men
Other Dietary Supplements
- You should be eating oily fish at least twice a week, but if you aren’t, take 1 to 2 grams of quality fish oil supplements per day
- You should be eating foods containing ginger and tumeric, but if you aren’t, consider supplements
- If you have metabolic syndrome take 100–400 milligrams of alpha-lipoic acid
- Take 60–100 milligrams of coenzyme Q-10 daily
Water
- Drink 6 to 8 8-ounce glasses of pure water daily (use bottled water or get a purifier if the taste of your tap water is not appealing to you)
- Other weak beverages may substitute for water, such as tea, diluted fruit juice, or sparkling water with lemon
