We need a wholesale reevaluation of what health feels like. Most Americans don't even know what that is anymore. I want to tell people, "Listen, there are places where you can focus on your health, and it can actually be simple."

As a surgeon you have to have a controlled arrogance. If it's uncontrolled, you kill people, but you have to be pretty arrogant to saw through a person's chest, take out their heart and believe you can fix it. Then, when you succeed and the patient survives, you pray, because it's only by the grace of God that you get there.

We don't need sugar to live, and we don't need it as a society.

Every hour you sit at work increases your mortality 11 percent. Think about that.

My mother was all about unconditional love, and I don't think we give that to our patients a lot. At the end of the day, what they really need you to do is to look at them in the eye and say, 'I'm here for you. I'm going to make sure this works out.'

Here's the number one reason Americans are heavy: The brain, very smartly, wants nutrition. But the average American is not eating nutrients; he or she is eating empty calories. So you finish that 2,000 calories and your brain says, Keep going until you get nutrients.

The rule I use is, If it doesn't come out of the ground looking the way it looks when you eat it, be careful. There's no such thing as a PowerBar tree.