In a large part this started out as a way to improve my health and just detox my system. My fibromyalgia for example can be almost completely controlled by diet and exercise but, you know, that also necessitates the diet and exercise actually happening.
This current food plan seems rather restrictive from an outside perspective but once you're a few weeks in it is actually pretty easy. Sort of. You start out the diet cursing at dietary labels once you figure out that 90% of them have at least one ingredient that completely sucks and then get to the point where you can look at the label, just sigh heavily and move on to making your own foods again.
I would actually recommend my diet for anyone because it has made me feel better than I have in my entire life but if you don't have health issues it doesn't need to be quite as restrictive. If for some reason you're trying it out my way, please give it at least two months of straight out sticking to it. Why? Because it helps. Because you'll see a difference. Because it takes a little while to get the bad stuff loosened up and out of your system.
This is me at my heaviest in a fabulous red dress with the lovely miss Andrea. Adorable I may be but not my favorite look.
This is me currently
I need a better picture because my polka dot dress is a little baggy, but if you look at my face especially you can see a huge difference.
Here we go...
- My weekdays
- All day
- TONS of water. Reverse osmosis filtered water. Never tap water. Ever ever ever. Very important.
- Morning
- Essiac tea, 2oz, used in detoxing, cancer treatments
- Green Smoothie 16 oz
- Spinach, zucchini, romaine lettuce, dandelion, tomato, sometimes some other veggies like beets
- Cottage cheese (about 2-3oz, blended with about 2-4 tbsp organic whole milk, flax seed (1 tsp) and flax seed oil (2 tbsp), mixed in w/ a few ounces of fresh fruit usually berries of some sort, this is the Budwig Protocol, used for detox, cancer treatment, cholesterol among other things
- Drinks:
- Peppermint tea
- 3 tbsp apple cider vinegar w/ 8 oz of distilled water
- Mid morning snack
- Usually carrot sticks and celery sticks with almond butter (not peanut butter because that tends to be one of the highest fungus/yeasty foods)
- Sometimes a small handful of almonds
- Mid day
- A tomato
- Sometimes a small salad
- Always some type of veggie
- Afternoon Snack
- Organic non gmo corn chips, sometimes with homemade salsa or guacamole
- Almonds
- Veggie
- Afternoon/Evening
- Cottage cheese blend again
- If I'm still hungry then I'll make something. If I eat something cooked, usually this is when
- Ideas:
- Hummus tacos (collard green leaves with hummus and sprouts, totally got that idea from Tumerico in town, she sells some great vegan prepared stuff at the health food stores here in Tucson)
- Veggie fajitas (organic corn tortillas, avocado/tomato/bell pepper slices with salt/pepper and garlic powder sprinkled on top)
- Salad
- Drinks:
- Essiac tea, 2oz
- Peppermint tea
- 3 tbsp apple cider vinegar w/ 8 oz of distilled water
- Weekends
- Similar to weekdays with the cottage cheese, green smoothie, at least one of my snacks, but usually I eat a larger healthy cooked meal on these days. These are my reasonable cheat days. Usually the only days I eat meat (once a day). Sometimes I'll have a small piece or two of homemade chocolate. At night I'll have a frozen fruit smoothie (about 12 oz or filling up a cereal bowl to the rim, not over and no sweeteners).
- Important to note: I eat ALL DAY. Like I'm literally snacking all day long. No calorie counting. Despite this I still lost 45 lbs. Never get super hungry just always grazing. Also, there have been no issues with cravings past the first three months of starting this way of eating. My biggest cravings were surprisingly not for sugar but for cheese. Oh I miss cheese! But I don't crave it anymore. If you eat the right things your body will know what to use and when to tell you its hungry.
- How to eat
- Eat all day!
- Breakfast is a must. Proteins, fruits, veggies all ok, try to avoid lots of grains
- Mid morning snack
- Lunch
- Mid afternoon snack
- Dinner (try to eat by or before 7. The reason is your body does a lot of its healing at night, you don't want to divert energy from that to digesting dinner)
- 2 cheat days a week.
- Going hardcore just makes you feel super denied. So have 2 cheat days a week. This doesn't mean get a big mac or go pig out on funnel cake. No no no. But if you've been raw all week, have a nice healthy cooked dinner on these days. My cheat days I have my meat in my dinner and frozen "ice cream" which is really just a bowl of frozen fruit put through my dessert bullet (best purchase ever besides my food processor) that totally comes out like soft serve. Not unhealthy, but just not as restrictive as the rest of the week.
- Fruits
- Ideally only one or two servings a day unless an alkaline fruit (grapefruit, lemon, lime for example). Fruit is still mostly considered an acidic food and depending on which one can raise your glycemic levels.
- Veggies
- Lots and lots of veggies. All day long! Not cooked. You want these raw as much as possible. At least 80%. If you eat them in salads, skip premade salad dressings. I make my own with lemon juice/olive oil/salt/pepper.
- Grains
- In cooked form, occasionally. Usually I get at most 2-3 servings a week of something like quinoa, brown rice or amaranth. Oats also possible.
- Taking a fiber/seed like flax (which I do twice a day), psyllium, hemp or chia is important daily. Flax, chia and hemp also provide a great source of omegas and fiber. Seeds need to be either sprouted or freshly ground (try to grind your own with a coffee grinder) to provide maximum nutritional benefits.
- Meats
- 2-3 meals a week tops.
- Meat, even organic meat is considered highly acidic. I promise you that you can get all of your nutrients and proteins from plants too.
- Make sure all meat and dairy is organic. This is extremely important because they are the most often and highest contaminated of all the foods available.
- Mix it up. Not all red meat if you do eat red meat. That should be a small amount. I do chicken one dinner on my weekend and red meat on the other day.
- Nuts/Seeds
- Eat lots! Pay attention to the acid/alkaline charts on this. Be aware that peanuts and cashews tend to be the most susceptible to having high amounts of fungus and thus yeast, so you really should avoid these two except very occasionally.
- Dairy
- Give it up. Seriously. Please. At least for the first two months unless you are following the Budwig Protocol that I mentioned above. Then only the cottage cheese mix during that time. After that, if you occasionally want organic dairy go ahead and add in one or two servings a week tops. Ideally less than that.
- Dairy goes straight into your system and primarily raises your sugar levels. Yes it is often enriched with vitamins like D and some of the B's but to be honest, often enriched foods are enriched with synthetic vitamins that are not easily absorbed by the body anyway.
- Example: Taking a synthetic calcium can get you generally at most a 40% absorption rate. So you might get 400mg out of that 1000mg that you took. Get your calcium from a plant based source can up that absorption to 60-80%. Your body just knows how to use natural sources better.
- Cook for yourself as much as possible. Make your own snacks. My new favorite kitchen gadget is my food processor because it can slice my veggies in about 2 minutes tops. If you need ideas before I post more, just ask me :)
- Supplements:
- Eventually when you get your diet down, you really won't need to take many supplements.
- Choose wisely. My rule of thumb is there should never be more than 5 or 6 "other ingredients" in a pill other than fruits and veggies and never should it contain sugar, soy, artificial ingredients or food coloring. Who cares if it tastes or looks good? Its a pill.
- For the moment here's what I would suggest:
- One a day food based multi
- Probiotic w/ prebiotics 2x a day morning and night
- Greens powder 1-2x a day
- There might be more than this depending on your situation.
- Things to ditch
- All drinks that aren't water or unsweetened tea. No juice (the exception to this being that which you make yourself), no coffee, no sweetened drinks, no soda, no alcohol. These are all excess calories. With the exception of the coffee they all raise your blood sugar levels and give you pointless calories. Each time I gave up soda (yeah, it happened a lot) I lost five pounds in less than two weeks. And coffee actually dehydrates you. So that's not helpful.
- Once you're out of the first two months if you want to have one or two drinks within reason (organic juices, no sugar added, limit alcohol, never again soda...ever) on a cheat day then go for it. The key is keep it to ideally to one or two a week tops.
- Non-Organics
- In an ideal world, all of your food should be organic. If you can't or don't want to start it all at once, please start in the following level of priority:
- Meats/Dairy/Corn/Soy
- Any fruits or veggies that don't have peels
- Any fruits or veggies that can be peeled
- All GMOs
- Seriously, they literally blend poison into the food. Don't eat a GMO if you can avoid it.
- Processed foods. Enriched/processed/non whole grains.
- If you are trying to detox I would recommend giving up the following at least on a short term basis.
- Dairy
- Soy
- Gluten
- Alcohol
- Sugar
- Additives. There should be absolutely no added sugars, weird chemicals (google is your new best friend for figuring out if that is a fancy name for an herb or just junk), soy for no apparent reason, etc. If you get food, it should just be the food in it. I once found frozen chicken taquitos that had sugar in them, why on earth...? Those should literally have been only chicken and corn tortillas.
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