- It's time now for the diet that has everyone
from Beyonce to Jay-Z and Jennifer Lopez signing up.
- Please welcome Marco Borges.
- Marco Borges, an exercise physiologist
and lifestyle coach. - Every time you eat,
you're either feeding your health or you're fueling disease.
How do we expect kids to make healthy choices
if they're programmed to eat pizza
every single day for lunch?
Constipation is an $80 billion business. You know why?
'Cause we don't eat enough fiber.
Here's an easy way to get more fiber into your diet.
I could go on and on. Don't get me going.
Don't get me going.
- So first up, why did you choose to go plant-based, Marco?
- I chose to go plant-based
because I was tired of seeing disease around me.
I chose to go 100% whole food plant-based
because I was tired of seeing disease around me,
and I'd read the data, right?
Data is key.
I read it and I realized that if you wanted
to be optimally healthy,
you had to move towards a 100% plant-based diet.
I'd also realized that the data said
that the more you lean towards a plant-based diet,
the healthier you're going to be.
So there's no right or wrong way to do it.
The more you lean towards plants,
the greater the benefit, right?
The more you lean towards plant, the better the benefit.
So in moving towards a plant-based diet,
in going 100% plant-based, I realized
that I didn't need to be 100% plant-based.
That I could probably be a lot like the people
that were living in Sardinia and the blue zones in Okinawa,
and that I can eat a very small percentage of my diet
from animal protein.
That would probably be super healthy,
but I wanted to do everything possible
to prevent the diseases that I saw in my family.
Heart disease, diabetes, cancer and the list goes on and on.
So I wanted to do everything possible.
And then I realized how the animals are treated.
So I went plant-based for optimum health.
I went plant-based for optimum performance
but I stayed plant-based for the animals.
- Mm-hmm, 100% agree.
And I've heard you talk about epigenetics
and gene expression, turning it on and off
in the context of lifestyle and health.
You speak really passionately about this.
Can you just explain this to our audience?
- Okay. We're born with a box.
Let's call that box our DNA.
We don't know what our genes are supposed to do exactly.
But we have an idea 'cause we can see our family,
but it's not 100% because they may be doing things
that up-regulate or down-regulate some gene expression.
So it could just be their habits that's causing the diabetes
or the heart disease.
I say that it's not disease that's handed down
from generation to generation, but rather habits
that are handed down from generation to generation.
So if you're given this box
and you don't know what's inside that box,
that box could be a very fragile piece of glass
that are on the first drop,
it smashes into a billion pieces,
or it can literally be a rock.
That no matter what you do to it,
you're never gonna get cancer.
That could be you.
No matter how many packs of cigarettes you smoke,
no matter how much saturated fat, no matter how much sugar,
you're never gonna get heart disease,
you're never gonna get cancer,
you're never gonna get diabetes.
That may be you.
Are you willing to take that risk?
I'm not willing to take that risk, right?
You may be that person
that has a really gifted genetic pool.
You may be that person, or you may be someone
that does not have a super gifted genetic pool.
So, very simply,
I practice to live the absolute healthiest possible life.
I pray that I have the safest genetic pool
that I could have possibly been given
while practicing as if I had the worst genetic pool
I could have been given.
You understand?
I practice as if I was never getting $1,
hoping that I, at some point, will inherit $10 billion.
And then you find the middle ground that you realize, okay,
we actually can take control of our health
because we know that our dietary choices,
we know that our lifestyle choices,
has an incredibly profound effect
on up-regulating and down-regulating gene expression.
Do you get more cancer or less cancer?
Do you get more diabetes or less diabetes?
Do you get more heart disease or less heart disease?
And a large part of that is the habits
that you're practicing on a daily basis.
What are you doing? How are you living?
How much stress are you taking on?
How well do you sleep?
How much movement are you getting?
What kind of foods are you eating?
All of that combined.
Yes, I wish I could distill it down to one thing.
Eat a blueberry everyday, I'd never have a problem.
It's not that simple.
It's a lot more complex than that
but it's not so complex that you can't practice it.
Right? Five pillars.
Whole food, plant-based diet. Number one.
Number two, get adequate amounts of sleep.
Turn all the lights off, practice good sleep hygiene.
Turn everything off in your room,
including all social media, all computers,
and get a great amount of rest every single night.
Love and intimacy. Love the people that are around you.
Be in a strong, healthy relationship, right?
Stress management. How well are you managing your stress?
Don't let things that you can't affect
change the way you feel.
If you can't control it, don't worry about it.
And then the last thing is movement. Move.
Our bodies were meant to be in motion.
Sitting is the new smoking. Stand up, get active.
Walk to that store, take the flights of stairs,
park a little bit further away.
You do all of these things and I promise you,
you will live a much, much healthier lifestyle.
- What's the biggest factor turning people away
from plant-based diets?
- A lot of people believe that a plant-based diet
is too expensive, that you're only eating grass
on a daily basis and that it's too difficult to do.
And I think the most important one
that people are really secretly not saying
is that they have to sacrifice taste.
Everything will taste bland.
Nothing's gonna taste great.
And I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt,
that all of them couldn't be further from the truth.
And I'll start with cost, right?
A whole food plant-based diet is actually way less expensive
than eating animal protein.
I mean, think about it, right?
When you go to the supermarket,
what's the most expensive thing?
It's not the greens.
It's the protein, it's the animal protein.
So we can get rid of that myth.
Number two is that all you're gonna be eating is greens.
No, you're not gonna just be eating greens.
Yes, you're gonna eat some greens
but you're gonna eat so many different types of foods.
Nuts, seeds, greens, beans,
legumes, vegetables, grains.
There's just, it's such an abundant
and beautiful lifestyle.
And there's so much more that you bring into the diet
when you go whole food plant-based.
You have the power to affect the way you feel.
And when you harness that power,
you realize how important it is to understand
how you can make foods that will make you feel better
and will nourish your body from the inside out.
And lastly, that you're going to compromise
or sacrifice tastes just to feel better.
And some people will be like,
"Well, if I have to just eat bland food,
I'd rather not live as long a life."
BS, nothing tastes better than health. Nothing.
You know what?
That brownie or that bag of chips
or that piece of fried pork or chicken that you're eating
will taste good for the 30 or 40 seconds
that you're consuming it.
But when you're done with it, the feelings are gone
and nothing tastes better than knowing
that when you eat something, you feel great the entire day.
That every time you stand in the mirror,
you feel great about your daily actions, your daily choices,
and about the way that you look
and you feel from the inside out.
Nothing tastes better than feeling great.