The Daniel Plan: The 5 Pillars of Weight Loss Success

The Daniel Plan is a groundbreaking program that will equip you with practical tools and resources to help you get into the best shape of your health. 

In this episode, we've answered some questions from our audience which we hope can also help you understand better what is in store for you if you get yourself into this program. 

If you haven't seen this, check out the Daniel Plan website.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Tana: Hi everyone. We are so excited to be here today answering questions about the detox, the talk we did last weekend, right?

Dr. Amen: For the Daniel Plan.

Tana: Right.

Dr. Amen: Which is a book, program that Mark Hyman, Rick Warren, and I wrote. Tanner was one of the coaches on that. It goes perfectly with the philosophy of what we have been teaching for a long time.

Tana: We're not schitzophrenic, we're looking at three different cameras. Just so you know, okay? We are trying to include.

Dr. Amen: Is that definition of not being schitzophrenic?

Tana: Right. We are trying include all of you. We're being inclusive.

Dr. Amen: So, we're gonna answer questions. We got a lot of 'em and actually one of my favorite ones is "I hate cooking, any tips for the non-cooker?"

Tana: You're gonna give me away aren't you? He's gonna throw me under bus right now.

Dr. Amen: When I met her, she couldn't cook if fact I prayed.

Tana: Yes.

Dr. Amen: Fervently, that she wouldn't cook.

Tana: It's true.

Dr. Amen: Because it was like a bomb would go off in the kitchen.

Tana: I did not learn how to cook until actually, probably when we got together, and Daniel says I went from disaster to master. There's a reason for that. It was because I actually, here's the secret even though I've written eight cook books, I don't love to cook, okay? I love to serve my family so I think part of the secret is that you focus on what's important to you. If it's, cooking, you know some people love to cook but if you don't love cooking, focus on the reason you're doing it. I did it because I wanted to be healthy and I couldn't go out at the time, to just all these great, healthy restaurants. There are still not that many of them but also because I wanted to serve my family. I didn't want my daughter growing up in the same sort of food chaos that I grew up in and so I learned how to do it. One of my biggest tips, the thing I would give to you is find ten things that you love that are super easy. Like the chicken wings that I make for my family, super easy recipe, I know I can do it in fifteen minutes and the preparation's just incredibly simple. I have 10 or 15 recipes that my family loves that I know are easy and from there, you'll start to branch out.

Dr. Amen: "I am new to the Daniel Plan. I read the book and watched the videos. Where is the best place to start?" What would you say?

Tana: I think that this might be different for everybody because I think that, like you talk about a lot, is tiny habits. I think that probably the thing that's easiest for you to master might be the thing to do. If drinking water sounds easy to you, start with drinking water. If cleaning out your pantry, we'd probably recommend that for all of you but master one thing. Clean out your pantry. Fill your pantry with good things. Drink water. Take small habits though and start to them expand them and whatever one feels the easiest to master, that's where I would start. What would you say?

Dr. Amen: The Daniel Plan is based on five pillars, faith, why do you care? Ask yourself and answer that question. Now, I never want to be a burden to my family. I want to live with great energy. I'm completely vain and I want to be in the same size pants I was in when I was 18. What's your motivation? Why do you care? Food, is this good for me or bad for me? It's really about a relationship with food but just start asking yourself this question. Will this serve my health or with this hurt my health? Fitness, brand new study I told you about this, if you're 80 years old and you walk at a three mile an hour pace, you have a 90% chance to live until you're ninety. If you can only walk at a one mile an hour pace, you have a 90% chance you will not live until you're 90 so start walking faster. I always tell everybody walk like you're late. Faith, food, fitness, focus, stop believing every stupid thought you have. Whenever you're sad, mad, nervous or out of control. Start journaling just start writing down what you're thinking and friends. People get better together or they get sick together. The thing I say over and over again that I just believe, the fastest way to get healthy is to find the healthiest people you can stand and then spend as much time around him or her as possible. Get the Daniel Plan. Do it with a friend.

Tana: Couldn't agree more.

Dr. Amen: If you could buy a copy for yourself and buy one for someone else and you do it as a group, you just get better faster. Just pick something really simple from each of those five pillars and go I'm doing that today.

Tana: Yeah, so I like the idea of picking something really simple you know you can do, master it and then move on. I like that. Let's see "I see the Daniel Plan talks a lot about detox. Can you please share some tips? Refer to watching" ... Okay, let's see, the first thing I want to do with the detox is explain what detox means cause a lot of people think we're going to drink some solution. Detox means this magical thing that happens and we're going to eliminate all of the bad things out of your body and by some you know, some magical thing we do. Really, what detox means at least for us, is you're going to get rid of the things that have been hurting you and start adding the things that have been helping you. We do not want you on a starvation program. We don't want you doing an all juice fast. We don't want you feeling miserable or deprived so you can all breathe a sigh of relief now. Really, what it means is that we just want you eating super clean and getting rid of the things that have been hurting you. That's really what we want you to focus on. An example would be sugar. We want you start with getting and we want you to start with two weeks of, because anyone can do that, or ten days. Ten days, anyone can do ten days, get rid of sugar, caffeine, anything that contains gluten, so especially wheat, dairy and what am I missing? Processed foods.

Dr. Amen: Corn. Soy.

Tana: And processed foods.

Dr. Amen: People are going but there's nothing left to eat.

Tana: Oh, there's so much.

Dr. Amen: We promise you, thousands of things and you want to think about food, you know what's your relationship? Are you going to eat something that serves you or something that hurts you?

Tana: Be thinking about adding lots of fat and healthy protein so not trans-fats or processed fats but nuts, avocado, seeds. A little healthy protein throughout the day will keep you very satisfied. Go to the Daniel Plan's website, the Daniel Plan cookbook, it's loaded with recipes. Their chefs are amazing. They're really going to help you get this down and not feel deprived. It's about abundance. It's not about deprivation.

Dr. Amen: The next question is "Life is so busy with my family, I really struggle prepping meals for the week and because of this, we typically go to fast food restaurants or I whip up something quick that probably isn't the healthiest. What do you suggest?" I suggest making this a priority and if you're gonna go pick up stuff, cause we pick up stuff.

Tana: Yeah.

Dr. Amen: It's find the restaurants that you like that like you back. Focus on organic vegetables and fruit, meats and you go oh, but that's expensive. No being sick is expensive. You really want to get your mindset right. A great website to go to is the environmental working group because they'll tell you which are the vegetables you really need organic and which are the ones that are okay to do non-organic.

Tana: I really like that and one thing I tell myself in order to reframe this cause it really is all about mindset. If you really want to do something, you will find a way and if you don't, you will find an excuse. That's just been our experience. What I really want you to focus on here is when I, cause we are really busy and I know how hard it can be when you're that busy. We traveled all the month of December, part of January and it was exhausting. When I am that tired, that's especially when I tell myself I am too busy not to make good decisions about my heath. I am too busy not to eat healthy, not to exercise, not to get my sleep. I have to be especially protective of myself and my family. I'm even more vigilant during those times and so come up with some simple solutions. I pay my daughter. Yes, bribery is a good thing, at times, so it becomes part of her chores to help chop up veggies or have an assistant, my assistant who normally helps at work, guess what, I have to have a cross over and she'll help me with things around the house and chopping up veggies and going to the grocery store and making sure I have healthy snacks. If you want to find a way.

Dr. Amen: Now people are saying I don't have an assistant.

Tana: Right.

Dr. Amen: I'm not like Tana Amen. I can't do that so before you were Tana Amen, what would you do?

Tana: That's a great question because now, my life is different now so that's my challenge is time now. There's been a time, believe me, lot's of times when it was financial and so one thing you can do that I have actually know of people doing very successfully, share the chores with another mom or another wife or someone, another person in your neighborhood. One person goes to the grocery store. One person is prepping. It is not harder to make a double batch of say, turkey chili or soup or something like that as it is to make one and it's not.

Dr. Amen: So and even before you had help, if you really wanted to do something.

Tana: Yeah.

Dr. Amen: You found the time.

Tana: I find a way. Yes, it's just, you just have to make it priority.

Dr. Amen: So what we're just asking you to do is make your health a priority because your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit that was given to you by God, that was bought for you at a price. If you're not taking care of this, it means you're being disrespectful to the most important gift God gave you or one of the most important gifts God gave you.

Tana: One last little tip, here's an example of what that looks like. We do a lot of meetings, a lot of interviews. I do my interviews walking around, okay? I am moving. I don't like sitting all day and for me when I'm really busy, that's one of the things that really gets to us and gets me down. I move while I am interviewing while I am on meetings.