I am devouring health books lately. The latest one I have gobbled up is Dave Asprey's The Bulletproof Diet.

I don't want to focus on the exact details of the diet in this post, but rather on some more basic principles that I think are of value whether or not you want to apply the diet in question or not.

I will do a separate post detailing the Bulletproof diet, along with other diet I really like. But for now, let's dive into some of the stuff I gleaned from this book.

Here are my 4 biggest takeaways from the The Bulletproof Diet:

1 ) Inflammation Is At The Center Of Many Diseases

Cardiovascular diseases, various cancers and diabetes account for almost 70 percent of all deaths in the US, and the common link between all these diseases is inflammation. It is also linked to some autoimmune diseases and also to certain mental health problems. There are researchers who claim that inflammation is the cause of schizophrenia and chronic depression.

Unchecked inflammation takes away your mental edge long before it causes you to feel physical pain. The brain is our early warning system for inflammation.

One of the easiest fixes for it is to eliminate wheat from our diet (gluten causes inflammation in more than 80% of people).

2 ) Weight Loss Is More About What You Eat Than How Much You Eat

There are still people who believe that cutting calories is the way to lose weight, or that a low-fat diet is the way to go.

The truth is that all we need to do is avoid things that trigger a hormonal imbalance (sugar, flour, all the "bad carbs") and give the body proper nourishment. A calorie is not just a calorie - eating candy and drinking Coca-Cola is not the same as eating a steak with a side of cabbage, even if their calorie counts might be the same. One causes insulin resistance and inflammation in the body while the other doesn't.

3 ) Fruits And Vegetables Have As Much In Common As Fish And Bicycles

"Eat your fruits and vegetables!" they say. THEY couldn't be more wrong. Fruits are sometimes called "nature's candy" in an effort to tout their health benefits, but in reality they have more in common with candy than they do with vegetables. Fruits are made primarily out of sugar and water, with a bit of fiber, while vegetables are low in sugar and extremely high in nutrients.

Fruits not so good, vegetables awesome!

If you're having trouble losing weight and you're eating lots of fruit, try removing it from your diet and see what happens. For far too long, mainstream medicine has been overstating the health benefits of fruit, while completely ignoring the risks of fructose.

4 ) Eat Your Veggies

That's one piece of advice that gets almost universal approval - everyone agrees about vegetables. And why shouldn't they? The have all sorts of nutrients are bodies need.

Vegetables should be the top food group in you diet. Period.