How does the Ornish Diet work?
Through his 2007 book The Spectrum, Dean Ornish—a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and founder of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in nearby Sausalito—lays out your nutrition, exercise, stress management, and emotional support options as a guide toward achieving any goal, from weight loss to preventing or reversing chronic diseases.
On nutrition, Ornish categorizes food into five groups from most (group 1) to least (group 5) healthful. It’s the difference, for example, between whole-grain bread and biscuits, between soy hot dogs and pork or beef ones. Ask yourself what groups tend to fill up your grocery cart, and decide how you want to fill it up. As for exercise, Ornish stresses aerobic activities, resistance training, and flexibility; you decide what you do and when.
To manage stress (long a core element of his program), you can call on deep breathing, meditation, and yoga. Find a combination that works for you and set aside some time each day to practice. Finally, Ornish says that spending time with those you love and respect, and leaning on them for support, can powerfully affect your health in good ways.
Ornish applies these “spectrums” to a host of common health problems, dedicating chapters to losing weight, lowering cholesterol and blood pressure, preventing and reversing type 2 diabetes and heart disease, and preventing and treating prostate and breast cancers.
The program to reverse heart disease is the one for which Ornish is best known. Given the ambitious goal, it’s unsurprising that doing it right, at the most healthful end of the spectrum, doesn’t give you much wiggle room. Only 10 percent of calories can come from fat, very little of it saturated. Most foods with any cholesterol or refined carbohydrates, oils, excessive caffeine, and nearly all animal products besides egg whites and one cup per day of nonfat milk or yogurt are banned.
Fiber and lots of complex carbohydrates are emphasized. Up to 2 ounces of alcohol a day are permitted, but guardedly. This regimen, combined with stress-management techniques, exercise, social support, and smoking cessation, formed the basis of Ornish’s landmark heart disease-reversal trial in the 1990s. He explains it in more detail in Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease (1991).
To follow the Ornish Diet:
Eat all the beans, legumes, fruits, grains, and vegetables you need to feel full.
Eat dairy low- or nonfat dairy products such as milk, cheese, and yogurt in moderation. Only 10 percent of your calories should come from fat.
Avoid meats (red and white), oils and products containing oils, including avocados, olives, nuts, seeds, full-fat dairy, and sugar.
Exercise for at least 30 minutes five times a week or 60 minutes three times a week.
Manage stress with yoga and meditation and by spending time with your loved ones.
Kick unhealthy habits such as smoking or drinking alcohol in excess.
Eat smaller meals more often to combat hunger, but be careful not to overeat because you’re eating more often.