Thrive Diet

The Whole Food Way to Lose Weight, Reduce Stress, and Stay Healthy for Life

Da Capo Press, 2008

15 min read

10 take-aways

Audio & text

What's inside?

You eat right, you exercise, you don’t smoke and you get enough rest. So why do you always feel listless and fatigued?

1×

Editorial Rating

Qualities

Applicable

Recommendation

Most Westerners’ typical diet is absurdly unhealthy: junk foods, fast foods, big meals with artery-clogging red meat entrées, rushed breakfasts, sugary snacks, corrosive sodas and super-sized portions. Professional triathlete Brendan Brazier presents his “Thrive Diet” to introduce the gluttons stuck in this fat and flabby world to fresh, unprocessed, healthy foods. His main premise: Many people expend more energy digesting dreadful food than the food delivers, so they are tired and “nutritionally” stressed. Instead, Brazier argues, people should eat easily digested, nutritious whole foods. Based on raw vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, seeds, sprouts and other “nutrient-dense” foods, Brazier’s diet is as healthy as the typical Western diet is harmful. Yet some readers may find it hard to eat (popped amaranth hemp seed salad?), complex to stock, and time-consuming to prepare (how long do I soak my pumpkin seeds in purified water?). Of course, people should eat nutritious, whole foods, but Brazier’s seed beet pizzas and pomegranate green tea pancakes sound like lots of extra effort in the market and the kitchen. getAbstract thinks this heartfelt book raises two questions: Do you want to be healthier? And could this rigorous regimen be the way?

Summary

The Performance Difference

You can learn a great deal about physical performance by observing great athletes. To compete, they must push their bodies to the limits. Athletes can provide valuable clues about training and diet. For example, active people who eat whole foods that are plant-based and nutrient-dense recover much faster from strenuous workouts than those who do not. Such a diet helps renew muscle tissue and slows the biological aging process at the cellular level. Most valuably, it greatly reduces stress, which contributes to fatigue, obesity, sleep problems, depression, aging skin and poor digestion.

The whole-food-based “Thrive Diet” offers numerous other benefits: It extends life expectancy, reduces fat, preserves muscle leanness, maintains energy, increases mental acuity, promotes restful sleep, minimizes sugar cravings, reduces cholesterol, improves skin texture, works against joint inflammation and increases productivity.

Stress

Stress is any factor that creates strain, such as unsound nutrition, excess exercise, lack of exercise, troubled relationships, pollutants, job unhappiness and psychological pressure. Stress-free people burn fat...

About the Author

Brendan Brazier is a vegetarian who has developed his own whole-food products. He is a tri-athlete, and won the 2003 and 2006 Canadian 50km Ultra Marathons.

Comment on this summary

Sign in to share your opinion
H. S. 4 years ago

Excellent
S. B. 4 years ago

Different books have different ways of saying the same content
S. C. 4 years ago

Excellent content...very usefull in day to day life....

Brendan Brazier