My new(ish) diet - an intro.

Diets are a curious thing. You can follow a recipe from one of those books...Lose your love handles, keep your tushie!, try a quick fix cleanse, or give up that one item that will change everything (soda pop I'm looking at you!).

I think what you need to do a lot of is follow common sense. Eating a salad does not make up for a giant milkshake for example. If I eat a giant hamburger with a pickle, (99% meat and bread, 1% pickle) that doesn't count as eating my vegetables.

In my quest to healthier lands I wound up with a combination of the following diets:

• Raw (like 60-70% of the time)
• Acid/Alkaline (20% acid/80%alkaline)
• Sugar free (honey and agave still used very sparingly, once maybe twice a week in very small doses EXTREMELY SMALL DOSES, they still affect your blood sugar levels)
• Yeast/Candida free (goes along with the sugar free. Basically there's good bacteria in your body and bad bacteria, if the bad bacteria overruns the territory then the good can't do its job as well. This negatively affects your energy, immune system, etc. One of the primary causes of candida overgrowth is too much sugar or yeast)
• Paleo (sort of. Paleo has some great recipes but when I see them they tend to trend towards fried, lots of meat and sugary things that don't have actual sugar in it but pretty much everything else.)
• All organics.  Literally all organics. That's the only food that enters my mouth.

These diets actually overlap a lot. Here's how they go together:

• Raw: Don't cook everything. Don't overcook everything.  Certain nutrients are only available when food is fresh, and yes sometimes cooking can unlock certain nutrients but generally they just wind up being overcooked and killing all the good stuff inside.
• Acid/Alkaline: cooking everything turns it acidic because there's no good stuff left for your body to nourish itself with. Eating a little bit, totally ok, but it should only be about 20-30% tops.
• Yeast/Candida free: lots of cooked/processed foods turn almost instantly into sugar in your body, raising the candida levels, not only not providing you anything useful, but pretty much the human body equivalent of putting sugar in your gas tank.
• Paleo: use what God gave you lots of. Veggies, some fruit, meat, skip the processed foods especially sugary bits, grains, overcooking.
• Acid/Alkaline: Some foods are acidic (usually those that are lacking lots of nutrients or raises your sugar levels too much) and some are alkaline (usually full of good stuff for your body, lacking high amounts of sugar/oil/cooking). When your body is in an ideal alkaline state (generally at 7-7.5) it can heal itself more easily, and the theory is that disease cannot thrive in an alkaline environment. An acidic state causes inflammation, pain, fatigue, and diseases. It is quite useful to measure your ph levels using strips to see how your body reacts to certain foods. I measure my ph levels A LOT. This is the baseline I use to see how things are working.
• Raw: Cooking your food kills the good stuff and turns it acidic
• Yeast/Candida Free: Eating foods that discourage candida growth enables your body to reach an ideal and healing state. Helps in avoiding disease. Sugary/yeasty foods tend to be acidic.
• Paleo: Too many processed foods (ie acidic) leads to imbalance of the system, obesity, disease etc.
• Yeast/Candida Free: Avoid foods that encourage growth of yeast. Sugars, grains, processed foods. Eventually your body will balance itself out in the see-saw between too much candida in your system and allow it to start functioning as it should.
• Raw: Eating uncooked foods allow the nutrients to all work together as they should, fostering a balanced environment.
• Acid/Alkaline: Yeast/sugar/processed foods/grains are acidic. Eating too much of these and not enough of the alkaline foods causes illness in the body.
• Paleo: Avoid processed foods as often as possible. Stick to nature.
• Paleo: Things you would find in nature, not processed, bringing out the hunter/gatherer skills of our human ancestry but you know, in the grocery store. No more kraft mac & cheese for example.
• Raw: Found in nature, enough said.
•  Acid/Alkaline: The most alkaline foods line up with what you would get straight off a farm.
• Yeast/Candida Free: Avoiding over processed foods. 

Oh and the all organic thing? In my mind...supremely important. Without going into too much debate, I'm not a fan of pesticides in my foods or genetically modified foods (GMOs). And when I say genetically modified, I do not mean hybrids, which are crossbreeds of foods, but straight out growing things with chemicals engineered inside. Eating organic is not a 100% failsafe against GMOs but it sure lessens the risk. We'll talk about that another day. I just know in my experience if I eat conventional food (non organic) I can see an almost immediate difference in my body, my hormones, etc.

All of these diet components together can boil down to a simple thought...what is your food doing for/to you?